


The World's Strongest Hero

by catfractal



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow, Worm - Wildbow, ワンパンマン | One-Punch Man
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-11 20:55:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13532367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catfractal/pseuds/catfractal
Summary: Saitama fights his last battle, or perhaps it's just another average day featuring a monumental struggle that doesn't register as a blip for Saitama. Either way, he suddenly finds himself in a chaotic world where nothing is cartoonish and the stakes are real, a world hoping for a hero to rise above playing an absurdly high-stakes game of cops and robbers. How would Saitama affect things in a world full of bizarre powers, hopelessness, and people who walk the line in their hearts between human and monster? Let's find out, together.





	1. The Fate of a World is Decided

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fanfic, ever. This is one idea among many, but this one will be first. Think of this as an experiment to see how well would the two universes mix together.

As the man’s fist sank into the entity’s flesh, everything blew apart. It was a punch that broke the upper limits of sound, even slow-motion cameras designed specifically to watch light travel at a snail’s pace would have trouble catching the speed of the blow, aside from the fact that the pressure would have annihilated them before they captured a single frame if they were there, shooting the confrontation. It was the end of a truly legendary struggle, the stuff of mythology, the victor was clear. Good had finally triumphed over Evil, as soon as Good got its outfit all the way on and showed up in time to catch Evil with its pants down. The ultimate force of evil underestimated the avatar of good, but then, what else was new? It wasn’t like it would have made a difference anyway, when all was said and done.  
  
The reality that held the fighters in its firm grasp struggled to contain the titanic forces that threatened to destroy everything within, so great was the final blow that was struck. The universe threatened to come apart at the seams…now this would not do. If this wasn’t contained or averted, there would be no point in the heroic conflict, as everything would come undone. So the universe decided to give its hero a little vacation time. An adjacent universe perhaps, to be someone else’s problem for a little while until everything could be settled back into place and ready to reward its champion for his worthy effort. As an added bonus, the transition between worlds would bleed off most of the backblast. Two birds with one stone right there, the universe thought. What a good neighbor I’m being while taking care of my household problems. So it chose the best moment…there. See you soon, strongest hero.  
  
The atmosphere gradually settled and cooled from the result of the mighty punch around the lone figure, newly transported to a next-door world. Radiation dropped off and local spacetime reasserted its grasp around him as he slowly lowered his fist still struck out in front of him as he gazed around in growing puzzlement. The hero scratched his fearsome head as he took stock of his surroundings with an expression that an unkind mind would judge as baffoonish, and cleared his throat.  
  
“Uh, where the hell am I?” Saitama asked the desolate highway.

A distant blinking roadsign shone in the distance welcoming all incoming motorists to Brockton Bay.


	2. Fortune Rides On Eighteen Wheels

It has decidedly been a long day and sleepless night out on the road for Henry. Long-road trucking was a good job if you could get it, and lord knows that lots of people wanted in on the business with the Brockton Bay port closing its doors and putting a legion of breadwinners out of work. True, the trucking industry expanded significantly to make up for the deficit, but there was only so many spots open, leaving many out in the cold on the dole. Henry’s first thought every morning was a meditation on how lucky he was, and how easily he could have been one of those sorry jobless souls. So many little things lined up, topping off with a kiss of fortune that landed Henry his new occupation several years ago. Sure, it got tough sometimes with long stretches away from home and regular sleep that fed into a diet of coffee and cigarettes to keep him going, but it was worth it. 

His oldest kid just graduated high school and was working hard just like her old man studying in trade school to become a plumber. The world will always need a good plumber, her mother was fond of saying. His next was midway through high school, but was going through something of a rough patch. Henry tried to be understanding, after all, he went through something like that at her age. But she was a good kid, it’ll pass for her, too. Henry had another two in middle school, twins, those rascals. And to round it out there was one in elementary and one in preschool.

It was touch-and-go for a while despite his good fortune, but it was all smoothing out. Henry and the missus were nothing if not patient, and providence was rewarding them. But enough about that. He was only minutes away from the truckyard, and only a little while still from a kiss from the missus, a good breakfast, and a nap. Henry treasured those little blessings.

He zoomed past a lone figure standing by the side of the highway. A hitchhiker, at this time of night? Henry mulled it over for a few short seconds before pulling over and flashing his blinkers. There didn’t seem to be anybody else, so what was the harm? There’d been no sightings of villainous capes in these parts lately, and it could easily be a lost soul dumped out on their ass on the highway. Henry attempted acts of kindness whenever he could, righting tiny wrongs to help keep the world from spinning even more out of control. He was headed into the city anyway. Might as well have someone help keep him awake at the wheel. He heard a gentle knock on the passenger door of his truck and scooted to the other side to roll down the window and get a look at the hitchhiker. No use being completely careless.

“Mornin’!” Henry called out. “Where ya headed, son?”

“Hi. Wherever you’re going, I guess,” answered the hitchhiker, glancing up the road. 

Henry looked closer. A cape? Hmmm. Henry never saw a cape up close before. Where was his mask? Did he lose it? If Henry was being honest with himself, the hitchhiker’s outfit looked pretty goofy. Capes, though…he didn’t want trouble. But he already took the time to pull over and it would be pretty shitty to just drive away without a good reason as soon as he said hello. Henry scrutinized him. This kid looked more like a cape LARPer than a lost superhuman, but he knew from experience that appearances could be deceiving. Still though, he seemed harmless enough and kind of plain, aside from the getup. Henry made up his mind as he nodded down to the hitchhiker. This guy didn’t look like trouble.

“Hop in, I’m headed to Brockton Bay,” Henry said as he waved the hitchhiker in, scooting back across the aisle and unlocking the passenger door. The door opened and the stranger grunted as he heaved himself up into the seat and closed the door behind him. Henry shifted his truck back into gear and started back up the highway to home.

“I’m Henry,” he introduced himself amiably. He took a hand off the steering wheel and offered it to the stranger without taking his eyes off the road, glancing over into the boy’s eyes when he grasped his hand and shook it.

“Saitama. Pleased to meet you,” Saitama said, smiling.


	3. First Contact

The ride passed by in comfortable silence, interspersed with smalltalk, though Henry had to admit some of Saitama’s questions and answers were a little weird.  
  
“So where you from?” Henry had asked.  
  
“I live in City Z,” Saitama replied, gazing out the window at the brightening sky. “I hope I’m not missing any coupons in my newspaper today.”  
  
“‘City Z’, huh? Can’t say I’ve ever heard of such a place,” said Henry.  
  
“I’ve never heard of Brockton Bay, either. I never really thought about it before, but I’ve never been to anyplace outside of the City metropolitan area. I wonder where this is. I was never the best student, so for all I know Brockton Bay is nearby and I just never heard of it. No reports of monsters in any place called Brockton Bay, at least,” said Saitama. “You guys must take it easy here.”  
  
Henry furrowed his brows without losing his smile. City Z? Monsters? Was he talking about the Endbringers?  
  
“I bet City F is lousy with ‘em,” joked Henry.  
  
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Saitama rubbed his chin, trying to not look like a complete ignoramus as he tried to remember. “Honestly, with all the Hero Association crap they bombard you with besides the monster reports, it all blurs together and it’s hard to keep track. Takes the fun out of the hobby, you know? I just take ‘em as I see ‘em, and that works for me.”  
  
Henry wasn’t sure how to respond to any of that, so he just kept quiet and waited for Saitama to elaborate.  
  
He didn’t.  
  
The truck passed a sign telling that the next exit was ten miles away, in silence.  
  
Henry broke the silence, trying to not look like a complete ignoramus as he attempted to work through all the unfamiliar stuff Saitama just told him. Did Saitama just tell him that he’s a cape?  
  
“So what’s this about a hobby? I like to shoot pool and bowl when I’m not working and taking care of the family, myself.”  
  
“Me? I used to be a hero as a hobby to pass the time, although lately my hobby has been more professional,” Saitama replied as he glanced around the cabin absentmindedly. “Less fun than doing it just because I like doing it, but hey, at least I’m paid decently enough for it. But I dunno. I was starting to get bored with it even before I signed on with the Hero Association. Everything was just too easy before I knew it, y’know? There was no challenge in doing something that I know I can easily do every time if I feel like it. Although…” he paused.  
  
“Well, there were a couple times that came close to reigniting me again. Some fights that I thought would be interesting. But it was more of the same old crap, even in the end. Genos helps keep me focused, and King’s alright when he’s not kicking my ass like a cheating cheater, and the old man does cook some incredible grub. I dunno. There’s some people that I’ve met recently who make it all not so bad, but I still want that. A good opponent, y’know? It’s like there’s this empty space where a fight worth my time goes. Even just one would be enough to satisfy me, I think. Sorry if this is a little much from a stranger.”  
  
“No, no,” Henry reassured Saitama, his mind racing. “It’s no big thing to listen about another guy’s problems, kid. You sound like you’re having a rough time of it…” _in a weird way,_ Henry finished mentally, then shook his head and attempted to guide the conversation back to familiar ground, because it was clear that he had no hope of understanding any of the stuff the kid was saying, assuming the he wasn’t nuts. “Genos? King? Are those your friends? How’d you meet them?”  
  
“Friends?” Saitama repeated thoughtfully. “…Hmm. I suppose they are my friends, yeah. I met Genos when he got trashed by this giant mosquito and I met King when he was supposed to fight this other monster but ran away to go home and play video games or something.”  
  
Henry nodded as if this was a perfectly succinct way of explaining things as the truck passed the roadside sign telling him that the exit was half a mile ahead.  
  
“After we met, Genos got it into his head that he’s my disciple or something, like I have anything to teach him. Really nice guy, though, and he makes himself useful with all those gizmos in his body for chores and stuff, though I never asked him to do any of that crap. King comes over sometimes and plays video games, even though he cheats. Crap! I just remembered that I need to return his comic book and I roughed it up! I hope he doesn’t mind too much…” Saitama trailed off and laughed awkwardly, rubbing his head.  
  
“Disciple, eh? Y’must be an interesting fella to have anybody look up to you like that,” Henry opined as he turned onto the exit. Henry admitted that he was intrigued. This kid is barely older than his daughter and he has a disciple?  
  
“Uh, yeah, I guess?” Saitama said, playing it cool. “It’s kind of a huge pain in the ass, though. This guy studies me and pretty much everything I tell him is bullshit that I’m making up as I go along. I mean, I already told him how I got to be strong, yet he thinks it’s supposed to be some kind of koan when really all I explained was my three year training regimen. And he’s a cyborg to boot, so he probably can’t train like I did…I just don’t know how to tell him that I don’t have the answers he’s looking for without him nodding all seriously and then pulling out that notebook he carries everywhere and jots it down like it’s another pearl of wisdom, so he thinks.”  
  
“I…see…” Henry drawled as he drove down the city blocks that were slowly filling with shift workers getting ready for the day in the dawning light. “Say, Saitama, I’m heading to my truckyard to drop this off and then I’m heading home. Are ya fine with me dropping you off and making your way from there?”  
  
“Huh? Oh, sure. I don’t mind,” Saitama said, snapping out of his thoughts.  
  
The rest of the ride passed by in comfortable silence.


	4. A Pair of Paths Finally Cross

The Brockton Bay city planners, for all their faults, had the foresight to add a bus station within easy walking distance of the truckyard. Henry drove his truck in, locked it up, and strolled alongside of Saitama out to the station, intermittently chit-chatting. From what Henry could gather, all Saitama had was the clothes (half-finished-looking costume) on his back. He wasn’t sure how he got to where he was picked up. With each passing minute, Henry had a growing list of questions that spawned like the manifold of hydra’s heads every time he was given an answer to any given question. Did he have a place to stay? Did he even know where he was going?  
  
“Um, no. I don’t. I’m kind of figuring this out as I go,” Saitama said with an alarming lack of concern. “I’ve been in weird areas that I’ve never seen before, stuff you wouldn’t believe, but this is a city. I’ll be fine.”  
  
A growling stomach belied his words, and Henry was decided.  
  
“Alright, listen, from the sound of it, you’re a cape. That’s fine, but you’re in a city full of capes in a way that most other places aren’t,” Henry said.  
  
“I’m sure you think you’ll be fine,” he added before Saitama could object, “But Brockton Bay is very dangerous if you’re not careful, especially if you’re walking around without a mask or anything to cover your ass. There’s some capes who do the whole ‘no mask’ thing but generally they travel in packs to back each other up if criminals try anything in groups. It’s just not safe otherwise. So, it don’t sit right with me just turning you loose like this, so, here.”  
  
Impulsively, he pulled out some saran-wrapped sandwiches that the missus made for him that was in a shopping bag in his lunchbox. Right on its heels, he pushed a handful of ones out of his money clip into the bag. Finally, and Henry wasn’t entirely sure where this impulse was coming from, he fished a pen and napkin out of his pocket and scribbled his cellphone number before firmly placing it along with the bag into Saitama’s surprised hands.  
  
“If you’re in trouble or need a place to stay, call me, okay? Or, hell, call me to let me know you’re alright,” Henry said firmly, clapping a hand on Saitama’s shoulder. “Call me, day or night. I’ll help you anyway I can. The money’s for busfare, cuz I figure you need to walk around a little bit to get the lay of the land. But be careful. If a neighborhood looks rough, it is. There’s places that’re full of vipers who’ll be happy to make you disappear, or worse. I’d hate to see anything happen to you, kid.”  
  
Saitama grinned. Did it come off cocky? Maybe; just a little.  
  
“Don’t worry, pops. It’s been a long time since anything could lick me, but I appreciate the thought,” Saitama said, giving Henry a thumbs-up. “After all, I’m a professional hero. Thanks for the ride!”  
  
With that, he was off.  
  
An abruptly passing gust of wind billowing his cape somehow made Saitama look less dorky-looking as a guy in a costume carrying a plastic bag of all his current worldly possessions. He could almost believably pull the cool act off, striding towards the bus loading up with commuters and truckers on their way home after another long night shift.  
  
Henry watched him go, and then watched the bus pull away down the street. He was wide-awake now, his mind was still full of questions yet unasked. He got a feeling that was all over the place from this kid… Henry just glimpsed something, he was certain. Saitama was either completely delusional, or… Hmm. He shook his head to rouse himself from his thoughts, and bounced his car keys in his hand before turning and walking back to his car. He had a hand in rolling a set of dice, and only providence knew what the dice were rolling for. He’ll be hearing about or from Saitama soon, depending. With that final thought, he put it out of his mind to meditate on later.  
  
He had a breakfast date with the missus and a well-earned nap waiting for him, and damned if he was going to miss his slice of heaven for anything.

* * *

Predictably, Saitama got a little lost. Oh, sure, he didn’t intend to; but who can blame him when he’s directionless in a new city?  
  
Saitama didn’t care, though. Sure, he was still very confused as to what exactly happened at the tail end of that fight with that…hm. What did it call itself again? Some kind of god, or whatever? Lord of monsters? Bah, whatever. That shit all starts looking the same when you get monsters boasting in your face just about every day claiming that they’re the royalty of blah blah or scion of feh and they’re going to kill you horribly and then all humans after they’re finished with you, only to be blown away by half-hearted slaps and backhands, not even rating the effort of making a fist to punch them unenthusiastically. Whatever it was, that last fight got his hopes up again. He even started getting serious for the occasion! And then it just taps out after not very long? What a waste.  
  
But how did that connect with why he’s here now, wandering through throngs of early afternoon pedestrians? He had settled down a little bit ago to eat and a bunch of punks with shaved heads started giving him shit just for trying to eat a salami sandwich on a park bench, and they were just rude as hell when he asked them for directions before trying to rough him up before he knocked them out just so they’d shut up and he’d get some peace and quiet.  
  
All throughout he was pondering how he got here, and nothing sprang to mind. While it was technically true that he’d been to some weird places before, at least he could always reliably know how he got there! But this was something entirely new. And Henry, he never heard of the City megalopolis, let alone his hometown City Z! Very bizarre.  
  
As it just so happened, he meandered right by a library a couple blocks ago. Maybe a library could help? They have maps.  
  
Saitama stopped, shrugged, and turned around. Better than nothing.  
  
As it just so happened, Saitama walked in at the same time as a young gangly girl with a lot of brown hair and a pair of glasses did, too.  
  
She apparently knew where to go, because she walked right by the front desk and up a flight of stairs. Saitama reached the front desk.  
  
“Excuse me,” he said to the librarian at the desk. “Map section?” She jerked her thumb at the stairs the girl had just gone up.  
  
“Up there, take a left, then hang a right. You’ll see a picture of a giraffe with the word ‘MAPS’,” the librarian said, eyes appraising Saitama’s outfit with curiosity.  
  
Saitama nodded gratefully and moved on. Up the stairs, past the line of people apparently waiting on computers, and there it was.  
  
“Hopefully my last stop for some answers,” muttered Saitama as the bushy-haired girl with glasses now waiting in the computer line watched him disappear into the rows of atlases. 

 


	5. Taylor Goes Out Of Her Comfort Zone

Taylor Hebert was already having a pretty rough day, all things considered. The bullies at school were worse than usual, she was still reeling from meeting Armsmaster himself and being owed a debt of gratitude last night, she survived a fight to the death that she was still processing, the school had to have already noted that she cut class (for the second day in a row!) hours ago that she’ll have to deal with the fallout over at some point, and to top it off, Tattletale and the Undersiders wanted to meet her!  
  
_They think I’m a villain,_ thought Taylor as she stood in line for the bank of publicly available computers. _They would never have mistaken me for a criminal if I hadn't gone out dressed like I was up to no good._ Was it the dark colors of her costume? The fact that controlling bugs didn’t jive with the image of a hero? There were plenty of heroes out there with strange and even creepy powers, how did they manage? And now, she was seriously contemplating becoming a mole without any backup or resources. _A superpowered honeypot,_ she thought, twisting her mouth wryly.  
  
She was obsessing over her predicament as the guy from the lobby walked past her without a second glance. That guy again! He walked around and behaved like he was another library patron, but he stuck out like a sore thumb with his yellow jumpsuit, red gloves and boots, and billowing white cape; he was even bald and maskless! Was he a cape, or just some guy in a costume? Either way, he was asking for trouble walking around like he was, in times like these.  Assuming he was a cape, having no mask was really risky even if you were running with a group to back you up like New Wave does. Was that what he was, a new New Wave member?  
  
Taylor frowned. No, the New Wave always announced a new member before those members started regular activity, let alone walking around in public in costume. An independent? She had never heard of a cape fitting his description before. She’ll have to look him up. She noted that he stopped by the map section, reading the category list taped to the shelf under the garish sign with a cartoon giraffe and the word MAPS, before nodding and walking deeper into the stacks. What on earth does he want maps for?  
  
For a moment, Taylor entertained the image of the guy hiking through the forest trails outside of Brockton Bay city limits, his bald head gleaming in the sunlight and consulting an atlas.  
  
“Miss? There’s a computer spot open,” said a woman behind her, snapping her out of the absurd image. She glanced around at the spot the woman was pointing at. Hmm, too public. Anyone could see what she was browsing and typing, no use being careless. She’ll wait for a better spot more out-of-the-way.  
  
“Oh, thanks. You can go ahead of me, though,” Taylor said. The woman thanked her and went over to login to the system as Taylor resumed thinking.  
  
Maybe the guy was looking for city plans for some kind of job? Or… Frankly, Taylor was at a loss, spinning her wheels with increasingly unlikely scenarios. Besides, she really should be thinking more about her own situation and how she was going to navigate this mess on top of the mess that was her life.  
  
She waited in line for a few more minutes before a middle-aged man got up from a seat that was out of the way and had a sightline on the entrance to the map room. Perfect.  
  
She sat down and logged in before procrastinating answering Tattletale by digging up dirt on the mysterious bald guy. Or, tried to.  
  
Nothing came up! She even tried the search string ‘caped baldy’ and got a bunch of articles, none of them fitting the guy’s description. She browsed over to the Brockton Bay section of Parahumans Online that she looked at earlier today…nothing. Not even a whisper of sighting of a new cape, especially with all the commotion that Lung’s arrest was stirring up, prompting speculation on what the Azn Bad Boys intended to do in response. Hardly surprising, given how she was hardly in the system either. Was she overthinking about this? It wasn’t like she could just go up to him and ask him, excuse me, but are you a cape, could she? It’d be terribly awkward, and Taylor wasn’t the most socially savvy to pull off asking that kind of foolish question.  
  
But…the course she was going on now was that she was walking right into a potential trap with no backup, known or otherwise. She finally browsed back to the public message Tattletale posted, clicked on the username, and sent her an anonymous message expressing interest in meeting up and asking for proof that ‘Tt’ was who they said they were. Simple and sweet.  
  
She settled back and waited, idly browsing PO and thinking about how she’d approach this, assuming that the ‘RE: Bug’ message was the real deal. The whole time she was looking for information earlier and then writing the message, she kept an eye on the map section, where the guy hadn’t come back out again. She couldn’t imagine anybody sending a lot of time in there, but then everything about him tagged her as odd, so she let that go. She was mulling the possibilities as the tab she sent ‘Tt’ a message on flashed, indicating that she was answered. Taylor took a deep breath and clicked on the tab, and read the message.  
  
**Subject: re:Bug**  
**Proof?  Last night you didn’t say anything until I asked your name.  Big guy had a mess of nasty bites and you pepper sprayed him and I told my pal G that when he asked.  Good enough?**  
**G R and me will meet you at the same spot we crossed paths last night, k? Don’t have to get gussied up if you catch my drift. Rest of us will be in casual wear.**  
**If we meet at 3 will that give you enough time to get there from library with everything you need?  let me know**  
**Ta ta**  
  
Taylor’s blood was pounding in her ears by the time she finished, and then she read it two more times. There was no doubt, this was Tattletale and she knew where Taylor was at this exact moment. She stared off in the direction of the map room as she thought furiously. Was she being threatened? But then, why the mention that they would be showing up out of costume? She had no idea how superpowered criminal organizations were typically run, but she had been holding out a distant hope that she wouldn’t have to give away her face right from the get-go. But then, she really did want to be a mole, didn’t she? This was deep cover stuff like in spy movies, and it felt surreal to find herself facing the moment of truth. The offer wasn’t going to last forever, and what better way to debut as a hero than taking down an organization that has so far proved elusive to authorities? Maybe Armsmaster could get in on this, too, since he owed her a solid for taking credit for taking down Lung, even if she left out the detail that Lung was thrown off the roof because of those monstrous dogs the Undersiders had at their command. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Too many ambiguities and unknowns at play, and she knew she was almost certainly biting off more than she could chew. But yet…  
  
Taylor slumped slightly over the keyboard. She didn’t know what she was doing, but this felt like the best course of action, even though it was probably as dangerous as going toe-to-toe with Lung with no backup and little in the way of resources besides pepper spray and other odds and ends in her costume. She glanced at the map section again where it showed no sign of the costumed guy coming back out again.  
  
Okay, maybe not as dangerous as that, but still pretty dangerous. She hadn’t gotten a ‘killer’ vibe from her chance run-in with the Undersiders last night, but if she failed or was caught she was probably in for an ass-beating at their hands. Yet, there was the possibility that they already found her out and were just leading her into a trap under the guise of a friendly invitation. How did they find know where she is? Was she being watched, or had she been hacked? More complications, raising of stakes. She looked at the time in the bottom corner of her screen: 1:18pm. Ten minutes went by since she got the message.  
  
_Now or never, Taylor,_ she told herself. With hands that only slightly shook, she typed out a quick message of ‘See you at three’ and sent it out before logging off of the computer, getting up and slinging her backpack over shoulders. She felt like she was going to blow away and the only thing keeping her rooted was its weight. _I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,_ she thought as she nodded at the guy waiting next in line and walking out.  
  
She stopped in front of the room of the map section, hesitating. What was she even going to say? It would promise to be an awkward affair, and she might even be accused of stalking or end up disappointed that the caped guy wasn’t even a cape, let alone a guy who might be willing to take valuable time out of his day to act as backup for a scared-shitless teenager who didn’t know what she was doing. She had considered contacting Armsmaster, but she imagined that he was busy right about now dealing with Lung at the PRT headquarters and couldn’t come at such short notice. He’d probably even attempt to talk her out of it even though she was in the perfect position to be a mole, tell her to just join the Wards if she wanted to be a superhero this badly.  
  
Maybe this guy could help. Again with the maybes.  
  
She hefted her backpack, pulling the other strap over the other shoulder, and took another deep breath. It hasn’t even been 24 hours since she decided to take a chance on going out as a costumed cape, she already decided to take a chance becoming a mole, so what’s one more chance?  
  
Taylor walked into the maps section, hoping she didn’t miss him while she was distracted by her agonizing over entering a world of cloaks and daggers. To her relief, he was still here, and even better, alone. It didn’t seem like anybody was around, but it didn’t hurt to check. She played it cool by pretending to browse through the shelves looking for something specific that she couldn’t find. There was nobody there, and the clock was ticking. If she was going to do this, she had to do it now if she didn’t want to run late to her meeting with the Undersiders.  
  
Glancing one last time at the entrance of the section, she walked over to where the bald guy was poring over several different maps spread all over a table located in the center of the room. She was close enough to see that they were maps of the whole world, maps of different cities including Brockton Bay without much rhyme or reason, maps of different countries including the United States…what was he looking for? Hopefully it wasn’t important enough that she couldn’t convince him to help her. He didn’t appear to notice her approach as he sat staring at all the maps.  
  
“U-um, excuse me, do you have a moment?” Taylor stammered slightly, and winced inwardly. _Real smooth start,_ she scolded herself. He looked up at her.  
  
“Huh?” he said. For a moment, Taylor strongly considered apologizing with the excuse that she thought he looked like someone she knew and retreating to deal with her problems alone like she always did. She squashed that impulse with difficulty right as he added, “I’m sorry, what did you say?”  
  
“I asked you if you have a moment,” she repeated, mercifully not stuttering again like an idiot. She stuck her hand out in front of her. “I’m Taylor.”  
  
“Saitama,” the guy said, returning the shake, surprisingly firm but not crushing by any stretch. Taylor matched his grip, shaking twice before letting go. Was ‘Saitama’ his real name or just a cape name?  
  
“Sure, I have a moment. I can’t make heads or tails of these maps and it doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere anyway. Do you need something?” Saitama went on.  
  
“Yeah, uh. Listen, there’s no way to ask this without coming out awkwardly, so I’m just going to ask: Are you a cape?” Taylor asked a touch nervously.  
  
“I keep hearing the word ‘cape’ thrown around like it’s supposed to mean something. You mean like a hero?” Saitama asked, confusion plain on his face. This threw Taylor off a little. This guy wasn’t familiar at all with the term?  
  
“Kind of, yeah. It’s sort of a catch-all term for anybody with, well, superpowers, though that typically is for parahumans who do anything publicly like heroics or, well, committing crimes under a codename. You know what the term ‘parahuman’ is, right?” replied Taylor.  
  
“No? Uh, am I supposed to? Anyway, yeah, I’m a hero as a hobby, though lately I’ve been something of a pro,” Saitama said, idly playing around with the atlas laying open directly in front of him. Taylor’s confusion deepened with alarm. Did this guy live under a rock?  
  
“A hobby?” she asked, too nonplussed to be nervous anymore.  
  
“Sure! I do it because I like it. It was something of a childhood dream of mine, so I decided to train up and become a hero,” said Saitama with a smile, as if that didn’t explain anything at all. Was she being mocked?  
  
“Um, I’m sorry, I should go,” said Taylor, turning to leave. This guy didn’t sound like he’d be of any help.  
  
“What for? It sounds like something’s got you bothered enough to ask a stranger like me for something. So, let’s hear it,” Saitama said.  
  
Taylor paused, uncertain. “…I don’t think you’d understand, if you don’t get what I’m already saying,” Taylor muttered quietly, gripping her backpack straps. “If this is a joke, just tell me so I don’t waste my time, because I really do need to be somewhere very soon.” Saitama’s look of uncomprehension deepened.  
  
“Look,” Saitama began. “Maybe I’m not familiar with local words or anything like that, but from what I gather you guys also have heroes in this city, right? We’ve got lots of heroes back at home, so I’m sure I’ll understand at least somewhat. I’m being serious when I say that I’m a hero, and I take my hobby seriously. I’ve fought a lot of monsters in my time, and saved the world plenty of times. You asked me if I was a cape, a guy with superpowers. I may not have powers or whatever, but I’m really strong,” a shadow passed briefly over his face at that last bit. “You sound like you have a problem that only a cape can deal with, or you’d go to the cops or something, right? So lay it on me,” Saitama finished.  
  
By this time, Taylor had slowly turned back around to face Saitama again, transfixed. This guy…was either crazy, pulling an elaborate joke on her, or telling the truth. She blinked, thinking hard, weighing her options. It couldn’t hurt to go even more out on a limb, could it? She still had some time. She walked slowly back to the table before standing in place. There was still nobody coming into the maps section to interrupt her.  
  
“I’m…” Taylor started, stalling while she tried choosing her words carefully without going into specifics. “I’m going to a place where there might be a trap waiting for me. I…don’t have anybody to watch my back, even to get help if things go wrong. The local heroes are either busy or would take things out of my hands. I don’t need anybody to step in, just someone watching at a distance to make sure things are on the level. I’m supposed to be somewhere in less than two hours to meet a bunch of criminals, and I’m not sure what they want with me. I know what I just met you and that I’m interrupting,” she gestured at the table, “this, but this is short notice and I don’t know anyone else. I just need an…independent person who can handle themselves if things go sour. I’m sorry that I’m babbling at this point and that for all I know you’re just some regular guy in a costume who’s now playing a joke on me. So…if you’re being serious, will you help me?”  
  
Saitama took this in silence, glancing back down at the table only once before looking back up with a serious look in his eyes.  
  
“Sure,” he said, getting up and collecting a grocery bag on a seat beside him before walking around the table towards her. “I have the time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rubber meets the road! Now our story really begins. I'm trying to keep all characters as in-character as I possibly can, so hopefully I didn't mangle Taylor too much in my contriving to have them meet. I'm greedy and I want to pull the Undersiders in, too, because let's face it: they're all hilarious and already have good chemistry with Taylor, so why throw that out? And as an added bonus, it would be interesting to see them bounce off of Saitama. Plus, Taylor really needs some friends her age that aren't just some weirdo in a yellow jumpsuit, don't you think? Let's see what happens next!


	6. Crossroads

Between a shy girl and a generally apathetic guy, there wasn’t much in the way of conversation to be had on the way over to Taylor’s neighborhood. Truthfully, she hadn’t thought this far ahead, and the bus ride gave her time to reflect on what seemed like the latest poor choice in a list of recent poor choices growing at an alarming pace. What possessed her to invite a perfect stranger along on her ill-conceived venture of playing a spy on the basis that he looked like a cape? She chalked it up to stress and lack of sleep, but even then, there had to be a reason why she was behaving so impulsively lately.  
  
She glanced at Saitama again, who was seemed to be lost in his own thoughts as they got off the bus three blocks away from her house. There had to be a way to start salvaging this, assuming there was any hope left in her plan. She finally broke the awkward silence.  
  
“So…do you, uh, have any clothes besides what you’re wearing?” She asked, wincing at her awkward turn of phrase. Saitama seemed to either not notice or not care.  
  
“My costume? Ehhh, no. Right now, this is all I’ve got. All my regular clothes are back at home, uh, too far away for me to get them,” Saitama responded, smoothly covering up the fact that he is currently homeless. He didn’t understand anything about his situation, and he was getting nowhere in the map room back at the library. Sure, he wasn’t the greatest student in geography class, but none of the maps he found were familiar to him and he was increasingly worried about the possibility that he just found out that he is farther from home than he has ever been in his life. The more atlases he had pulled off the shelves, the more confused he got. Where were any of the Cities? Why did the continents look so different? There wasn’t even any familiar landmarks or names to speak of that he could find to use as a handhold. Was he in some kind of parallel dimension or something? But that was comic book crap like he’d read in those stories that King kept lending him. But nothing else could explain what was happening to him. It would also explain the culture difference he’d abruptly run up against, the names for heroes being different than back home. But how? Like what, did he punch so hard that he ended up stranded in a different world? And so, he had gladly taken up this distraction from stewing in his troubles. He put the thoughts back out of his mind. It wouldn’t do any good worrying about it until he knew for sure.  
  
Taylor nodded, thinking as they walked.  
  
“I guess you could borrow some of my clothes? I really only wear boy’s clothes, and you’re not much taller than me, so it shouldn’t be much of an ill fit,” she thought out loud. “I mean, I don’t really see any alternative.”  
  
“Works for me,” replied Saitama.  
  
They both said nothing more as they walked the last block and through Taylor’s front yard and into her house. She judged that even if he was crazy, he seemed harmless enough to warrant that token amount of trust.  
  
“So, uh, this is my house,” she said lamely as they walked through the entryway and into the living room. “Let me run upstairs real quick and grab you some clothes.”  
  
“Sounds good,” he said, peering around idly.  
  
She ran upstairs and was back down within moments, tossing a pair of grey cargo shorts and a brown t-shirt onto the couch and setting a pair of slip-on black flip-flops on the floor.  
  
“This should do,” she said quickly. “I’m pretty sure that my feet are your size, too. Give me a few minutes to get changed and we’ll be off. Bathroom is down the hall, second door on your left.”  
  
With that, she ran into the basement, rummaged around loudly, and then hurried back up and then back upstairs hefting a duffle bag.  
  
Saitama crossed the room and looked at the loaned clothes with a critical eye before shrugging. Eh, good enough. She scooped them up before heading over to the bathroom Taylor had directed him to and closing the door behind himself. With practiced ease, he unclipped his cape, pulled off his boots and gloves, undid his belt, and squirmed out of his jumpsuit. He set those aside before pulling on the shorts. I touch snug on his hips, but it seemed to otherwise fit him well enough. The t-shirt fit him fine. The outfit complete, he gathered up his costume and headed back out to the living room and stepped into the flip-flops. They fit him perfectly. Not really knowing what else to do, he neatly folded his cape and jumpsuit and put them in his plastic bag, followed by his belt and gloves. He would ask Taylor if she had a spare plastic bag or something for his boots when she came back down. He sat down on the couch and waited.  
  
The clock on the wall said 2:04pm by the time Taylor rushed back down the stairs, dressed in looser fitting long-sleeved clothes than before.  
  
“Hey,” said Saitama. “Why’re you dressed up in two layers now?”  
  
Taylor froze at the bottom stair, considering.  
  
“I’ve got body armor underneath,” she finally said.  
  
“Okay,” Saitama said, accepting it at face value. He gestured at the boots on the floor by his feet. “Do you have a spare grocery bag that I can put these in?”  
  
“Sure,” Taylor said, glad for the change of topic. “One sec.”  
  
She walked into the kitchen, Saitama getting up to follow. She pulled open a closet in the room and pulled out a bag stuffed into another hanging on a hook inside, then offered the bag. “Will this do?” she asked.  
  
“Sure, thanks,” said Saitama, taking it and walking back out into the living room and slipping his boots into the bag.  
  
Taylor had followed him out, and now stood by the doorway, pulling her backpack back on. “Ready to go?”  
  
“Ready when you are,” he said, picking up his bags and following her back out of the house and down the street towards the heart of the Docks.

* * *

 

Taylor rationalizing from the minute they walked out of the house, gathering bugs as she went, though out of sight.  
  
This scheme wasn’t a wholly bad idea. At the very least, she’ll have attempted to get info on the Undersiders by capitalizing on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity created by their mistaking her for a villain, and even if she failed, nothing would be truly lost. If she didn’t fail, well, more that she could capitalize on. More info to glean, hopefully enough to turn them in. She didn’t make a full mistake by bringing a complete stranger into her scheme, even if she hadn’t told him everything. At worst, he’ll be someone to phone for help if things turn south, and at best, if he really was a hero, he could be some muscle that she could fall back on. He certainly seemed confident enough. In fact, he seemed downright bored during the mostly quiet walk retracing her path back to where she had confronted Lung not even a full day ago. That lack of apparent fear was either from complete ignorance or complete confidence in his ability to handle himself. It was tempted to let herself be comforted by his casual ease, but there was still too many ambiguities for her to let down her guard. She still didn’t know how Tattletale knew the things she knew, but for all Taylor knew, they were already being watched by whatever power Tattletale was using.  
  
_I’m going all-in on this bet,_ Taylor thought. She wondered if this was the gambler’s fallacy at play in her mode of thinking, charging ahead with a minimum of security on a high-risk/high-reward venture that flirted with the risk of, at the very least, would see her getting a good ass-kicking. If it was bad enough, she would be hard-pressed to hide it from her father who was protective of her now more than ever, even after her mother died, after the locker incident. It could all come crashing down, even if she got off lightly with getting injured in a possible ambush. Even if they hadn’t seemed like killers when she met them, who knew? There was always a first time that somebody killed, maybe she’d be their first. Unlikely, but the possibility was present enough that made her even reach out to the first apparent cape she saw since Armsmaster wasn’t viable. Saitama was a thin guy, but she could see that his forearms and legs were muscular outside of the suit. Her shirt was a little small on him, so she also saw that his core bulged under the t-shirt’s cloth. The guy certainly was in shape enough to fight, assuming he knew out to fight at all and would come help her if she got into a scrap. A point in favor of her inviting him along being a good idea.  
  
The scenery was already changing, going from quiet, if run-down suburbs to more and more decrepit warehouses, tenement halls, chained-up vacant lots, businesses with bulletproof glass in every window, and boarded-up houses. She checked her watch for the upteenth time even though they were making good time: 2:35pm.  
  
“Man, this place is a shithole. Not even a decent-looking food stand around. Lots of liquor stores, though,” Saitama commented, snapping her out of her thoughts.  
  
“Yeah,” Taylor responded. “It’s been bad ever since the city’s docks closed and all the resulting layoffs. This particular area is less bad than others, but that’s not saying much. Just don’t come here at night. You’ve never been to this part of the city before, have you?”  
  
Saitama shook his head. “I only just uh…recently…got here, so I don’t really know my way around. This is where your buddies said to meet you? That’s pretty sketchy,” Saitama said.  
  
“I agree, although I suppose they could have chosen worse,” Taylor replied. “Anyway, since we’re close enough, let’s go over what you’re going to do. I don’t know how comfortable you are with confrontation, so that’s all up to you, but I’d appreciate you hanging out nearby and running for help if things turn out poorly.  
  
Taylor slipped Saitama a number (the PRT headquarters) and enough change to use a payphone. She knew enough about the area that she knew where the nearest phone was located. She’d give Saitama directions to it before she went up to meet up with the Undersiders at their designated rendezvous.  
  
“However, if you’re up for it, can I count on you to back me up if I yell for help?” She asked. “These guys are pretty strong and while I don’t expect you to fight them off, I’d appreciate help in helping me get away if they attack me.”  
  
“Sure,” Saitama said easily. “Say, with all this talk of you fighting bad guys, are you some kind of hero or something? Pretty gutsy of you to walk into something even if you don’t really know what you’re going to face. I used to do stuff kind of like you’re doing, once upon a time.”  
  
He had an air of wistfulness at that last statement, which took Taylor by surprise. But then, maybe she shouldn’t have been, if what he was saying was true (and up until this point he’d been consistent with his story), then he had a lot of experience if he was a cape like he claimed he was.  
  
“Any advice?” she asked, intrigued and perhaps a little hopeful. She was walking right into this and if you discounted her encounter with Lung, she had no experience to speak of with dealing with capes.  
  
Saitama was quiet for a few moments as they continued walking. She checked her watch again: 2:45pm.  
  
“Remember that this, like anything else, is just a hobby. If you’re serious about your hobby, don’t half-ass it, but strive to be the best and the strongest because of the pride you take in your effort that you put into your pastime. Um, uh,” Saitama stuttered for a moment, unsure of what to say. What was a good thing for teenage girls to hear? She didn’t seem like your average girl, so the typical vague inspirational crap you’d give to a girl probably wasn’t the best thing to feed her. Maybe more stuff he had in mind when he began training four years ago to pursue his dream of becoming a hero? He was sure that he didn’t learn much, if anything, afterward. She seemed to be expecting more, because she was quiet, putting it on him to continue. Hmmm. He coughed, clearing his throat.  
  
“If you want to be the strongest, be careful what you wish for. Don’t grow too quickly, or everything will become boring,” He said, pulling wise-sounding vague things out of his ass anyway. He needed to wrap it up and get himself out of the hotseat, he finished stoically as if he was speaking to Genos whenever the cyborg pressed him for insight: “Never forget that you want to be a hero, first and foremost. Everything else will work itself out if you stick to that, wherever you end up.”  
  
Taylor was silent for six blocks, not checking her watch or glancing around like she was before as she seemed to be digesting what he said.  
  
“…Thank you. I’ll keep all of that in mind,” Taylor muttered thoughtfully. She could tell that it was going to take her a while, unpacking everything he just told her. She would definitely think more about it when she had deadlines.  
  
_Sweet, she bought it,_ Saitama thought, with relief.  
  
Taylor looked up and saw that they were about a block away from the place Tattletale had indicated, within reasonable shouting range. She also remembered that there was a payphone two blocks away to their right.  
  
“We’re here,” she informed Saitama. She pointed in the direction of the phone. “There’s a payphone on the street two blocks down that way, to the left side. If trouble starts, if whether or not you come help me, please call the number I gave you. The PRT headquarters will answer, so all you would need to tell them is that the Undersiders are fighting a young rogue hero and that if they come quickly, they can provide backup and hopefully a good chance to catch them.”  
  
Saitama nodded, and Taylor took a long, deep breath to steady her nerves.  
  
“Alright, hopefully, I’ll be back. Um. However this works out, thanks for your help,” she said, sticking her hand out again to shake.  
  
Saitama smiled and took her hand, shaking it.  
  
“No problem. In any case, I’m sure you’ll be fine. But I’ll be here, no matter what. Heroes don’t run,” he said. “Go on, I’ve got you covered.”  
  
Taylor felt herself smiling back, despite herself and her misgivings about this whole situation. Why did it feel like she could trust him so much? What was it about him?  
  
“Thanks,” she said again, before walking away, and ducking into a nearby alley that would lead to the building that was her destination. A couple dozen feet in, she checked for the coast to be clear before moving into a space between a dumpster and a wall, pulling her mask on and shucking her loose outer clothes covering up the rest of her jury-rigged costume. It wasn’t nearly as good as what she went out in last night, but thanks to the fight, she didn’t have many other options that didn’t make her look foolish. She hoped that the Undersiders wouldn’t be too offended, assuming this wasn’t an ambush. One could never be too careful, even if Tattletale sounded sincere in wishing for a neutral meeting.  
  
She finished putting the finishing touches on her costume and packing away her clothes into her backpack. Her packpack, she stashed in a small space between the dumpster and the wall, and covered the space with a piece of plywood laying against a wall nearby.  
  
With nothing else to do, she squared her shoulders and marched down the alley towards the meeting place, pulling my bugs closer to me and discreetly scouting out ahead with some of my smaller bugs. It looked like they were already there, sitting around on the roof where I fought Lung, although it didn’t seem to be all of their members. Showtime.  
  
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

* * *

 

On the walk over, Taylor verified as best as she could that these people on the roof fit the descriptions of the villains that she ran into last night. There were three of them, one of them was missing. From what Taylor could gather by the information filtered through her bug swarm’s senses, it was one girl and two guys. Grue and Regent, she was sure. The girl was thin and had long hair done up in a messy bun. They were chatting amongst themselves, although Taylor couldn’t make out what they were saying, although they all seemed to be at ease. The girl in the group was very likely Tattletale, which further left Taylor to wonder where the other girl of the group, Bitch, was located. Was Bitch hiding? The bugs in her roughly three block radius around her person couldn’t find anybody matching her description, or her dogs. Weird.  
  
It didn’t seem like a trap was laying in wait, so Taylor felt a tiny pang of guilt for showing up in costume anyway, although she never promised that she wouldn’t. She didn’t really want them to see her face outside of costume, whatever they were doing. _Was this what I thought it would likely be, recruitment? Would I accept their offer? If I did, there would be consequences even if I ended up successfully becoming a mole like I originally planned. They’d probably would want to see my face, know my name. This was a dangerous game I contemplated playing. Would they be offended if I chickened out and turned them down?_ Taylor thought.  
  
In any case, it seemed like it was safe to approach, so she went ahead and climbed up the fire escape up the building’s exterior and pulled herself onto the roof at 3 o’clock, sharp. She was still wary, even if it seemed like there was no trap waiting to spring.  
  
“And she shows up,” the girl was definitely Tattletale crowed. She looked over at the boy with a bored look on his face, who had to be Regent, sticking out an expectant hand. “Pay up.”  
  
Regent scowled, fishing what looked like a few hundred dollar out of his pocket and slapping them into Tattletale’s hand. The bills disappeared into her purse, and she straightened up and waved at Taylor. “Glad you made it.”  
  
“Uh,” Taylor said, caught off-guard. “Did you bet on whether I would show up?”  
  
“Nah, I bet that you would show up in costume,” Tattletale answered amiably. “And I won.” She sang in a sing-song voice.  
  
“Again,” Regent muttered, still scowling even if his tone of voice seemed to indicate that he wasn’t terribly upset about it.  
  
“You’ve got nobody to blame but yourself, man,” the guy who had to be Grue spoke up. “Even if you weren’t betting against Tattle, it was a sucker’s bet. Showing up in your costume in case something happens is the most sensible thing to do. It’s what I would’ve done if I were in her shoes.”  
  
Taylor noted that Grue spoke with a manly voice, in contrast to Tattletale and Regent, who both sounded like ordinary teenagers, even though he almost looked like their age. She ventured closer, and they all stood up and walked up to me. Nothing in their behavior suggested that they were about to attack, and Taylor could feel herself relax just a little more, though that it still bothered me that Bitch was nowhere to be seen, despite being a confirmed Undersider member. Speaking of which…  
  
“So,” Taylor ventured, as everyone settled into a group with everyone facing each other, “where’s, uh, your other member? Bitch?”  
  
Grue winced. “She didn’t agree to the meeting or the reason why we contacted you to begin with, so she’s not here,” he answered.  
  
Taylor nodded. This fit with what she already knew of the area around them, unless he was a convincing liar and Bitch was lying in wait farther than Taylor could sense through her insects. But that was a stretch, and even if Bitch was their backup, Taylor had Saitama, even though he was something of an unknown quality in contrast to what Taylor knew about Bitch’s public record about her powers. In all this, she hadn’t thought to ask what exactly Saitama was capable of, something that would have come in handy in planning her fallback. Oh well, at least there was the ultimate backup plan of him hearing her screaming for help and then calling in the PRT, even though Taylor wasn’t confident that they would get here in time, given the Undersider’s reputation of always slipping away and being several steps ahead of capture.  
  
“I’m Brian,” Grue said, extending his hand towards me. Taylor shook it. Firm grip, though perhaps not like Saitama’s earlier handshake. Where Grue’s grip indicated that he worked out, Saitama’s felt…more solid, unyielding though gentle. Somehow. Taylor filed that away to think about later.  
  
“Lisa,” Tattletale introduced herself, not shaking her hand, though it felt less that Tattletale disliked her and more that Tattletale wasn’t typically a handshake kind of girl.  
  
“Alec,” Regent said quietly, “And Bitch is Rachel.”  
  
“Forgive me if I don’t introduce myself quite yet. Uh. You can call me Bug in the meantime, until I come up with a better name or I decide that this all isn’t some elaborate trick.”  
  
Grue shrugged, and didn’t seem put-off in the least. “If that’s what you’re comfortable with, that’s cool.”  
  
“So why did you call me here? I have to admit I’m a little weirded out that you all decided to show up out of costume and just freely tell me your names, or seem to.”  
  
“Sorry,” Grue said apologetically. “That bit was my idea. Thought that we could afford to extend a token show of trust.”  
  
Taylor nodded slowly, having a feeling where this was leading and that her earlier hunch was right. She decided to let them be the ones to say it, so she asked, “Why do you need my trust?”  
  
Tattletale opened her purse again, pulling out a metal lunchbox and offered it to Taylor. Taylor took it into her hands, studying it. An Alexandria lunchbox, her favorite cape growing up. The Protectorate sold merchandise like this in their giftshops. The box had some weight to it, like there was something inside. She looked up.  
  
“Is this a collectible?” Taylor asked somewhat jokingly.  
  
Tattletale rolled her eyes with a curl to the corner of her mouth and said, “Open it.” Taylor unclicked the box and pulled it open.  
  
“Money,” Taylor breathed. She didn’t expect this. She counted the stacks of bills…  
  
“Two grand,” Tattletale supplied, and Taylor looked up before looking back down and then back up again. Words failed her. She slowly closed the lunchbox and redid the fastenings.  
  
“Consider it a gift, no strings attached,” Tattletale, Lisa, smiled. “We also came to offer you a choice. Either way, you get to keep our gift. That’s for saving our asses last night, whether you intended to or not. And perhaps a little incentive to count us amongst your friends when you’re back out in costume, doing whatever no-good dastardly deeds to plan to get up to.”  
  
Her smile grew, as if she just told a small joke that amused only herself, before continuing, “Between territory disputes, differences in ideology, and general power struggles fueled by ego, there’s very few people in the local villain community who won’t attack us on sight.”  
  
Taylor caught that as being the first option and asked, “And the second option?”  
  
“That gift will become your first installment in your monthly allowance that you would be entitled to as a member of the team,” Grue answered. “An Undersider, one of us.”  
  
Taylor took that in. The possibility that this was a trap grew less and less likely by the second, and judging from all their faces this didn’t seem like a prank or joke. This was even better than she hoped for. She was going to become a mole! Even better, they’d be paying her to do it. She was glad that they couldn’t see her expressions under her mask, as far as she was aware.  
  
“Two thousand a month,” Taylor said, the statement a question.  
  
“No,” Alec finally spoke. “That’s what our boss pays us, but we get jobs pretty often, so we make a lot more than that.”  
  
“Whoa,” Taylor muttered. Grue smiled at that, Tattletale smirked, and Regent swished the contents of his bottle of coke in one hand, not otherwise giving a reaction one way or another.  
  
Taylor could walk away right now. She had their names, they didn’t have hers. She knew what they looked like, they didn’t know her appearance. The money was nice, but it was dirty money, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. She could still flip the info she had on the Undersiders right now to the authorities and still have her slate clean for her dream of becoming a hero, even if admittedly her powers suited her more as a villain than as a hero. She could join in order to get the dirt on their boss, she could join in order to find out what exactly Tattletale’s power is, she could join for a lot of reasons.  
  
But standing on the brink of the choice, she felt an odd sense of vertigo, and being able to see herself from outside. For no particular reason, she remembered what Saitama told her earlier: _Never forget that you want to be a hero, first and foremost. Everything else will work itself out if you stick to that, wherever you end up._ Could it be that simple? And if she ignored that, where would it lead? The more she thought, the more came flooding in. She became a member of the Undersiders, and then what? She would have to show them her face, tell them her name. If she wanted to know more about them, she would have to tell them about her. They seemed to have decent social chemistry as a team. What did they do in their downtime? Did they hang out? Were they friends? What if during the course of the mission that she would put herself through, she became friends with them? As it stood now, she was alone. And friends…especially the only friends that she’d have, what would she do when she found out what she needed to find out, and it came time to turn them all in? She was scared of what kind of person she would potentially become, whether or not she chose to betray people who, by all appearances, were welcoming her with open arms and trusting her with their faces and names without pressuring her into reciprocating in turn. Then she would be alone again, and this time it would be her fault instead of the bullies at school and all the neglectful authority figures that caused it. Why was she suddenly feeling so wishy-washy? How did Saitama, of all people, cause her to start thinking this way? Was she that desperate to escape her terrible life that she was going to do something that she was feeling with greater certainty that she never would have the heart to follow through on and probably never will, causing herself and others around her unnecessary pain in the process?  
  
The silence had stretched on without her realizing it, so caught up in her thoughts and the panicked feeling of indecision in the face of a choice she hadn’t thought as so important before. She looked up to see that the Undersiders were all staring now, Regent- Alec staring in puzzlement, Brian staring with concern, and Lisa staring at her gravely. She could only guess what was going through their minds right about now.  
  
With care, she set the lunchbox down onto the roof beside her feet before straightening back up to face them. Slowly, deliberately, she raised her hands up to her mask. She hesitated for a moment, her heart hammering. Lisa, Brian, and Alec watched her without a word. She gripped her mask and pulled it off in one motion, baring her face. She looked them each into their eyes, afraid of what she might see if she looked, but moreso of what might happen if she looked away from any of their eyes. They continued to gaze at her, not speaking. She realized that she was holding her breath, and exhaled before sucking in a deep breath, and forced herself to speak.  
  
“My name is Taylor,” she said quietly into the silence. “I’m afraid there was a misunderstanding last night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoof. What a cliffhanger to leave you guys on. I didn't even know it was going to turn out this way until it was already written down. It was eerie. Who anticipated that the first major divergence Saitama causes is something that doesn't involve even a single punch? LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT


	7. Divergence

The moment stretched on for what felt like an eternity. Taylor braced herself, ready to be attacked. Her insects swarmed ready to fly in on her command at the periphery. Eternity was only a few seconds after Taylor spoke when Lisa was the first to speak.  
  
“I know,” she said evenly. Taylor snapped her gaze to meet Lisa’s. Lisa said nothing else, her face neutral.  
  
_She knew?!_ Taylor thought, at a loss. _How long did she know? Did she know this whole time?_ Taylor was suddenly very glad that she had decided against becoming a mole, if her deception was exposed before it had even begun.  
  
The other Undersiders, Brian and Alec, had looked at Lisa when she spoke, and then looked back at Taylor. Confusion was plain on their faces, inviting her to continue. Taylor’s heart was still hammering, but there was nothing for it.  
  
“Last night…when you all found me here…you all assumed that I was a villain, but I didn’t have time to correct you. In reality, last night was my first patrol as an aspiring hero. Even though my suit looks sinister and my powers are creepy, it’s my dream to help people.” Taylor began haltingly before hurriedly adding. “I’m not with the PRT, or the Wards, or any other team or anything like that, although Armsmaster offered last night. This morning, when you contacted me, I…” Taylor stopped for a moment to shocked silence from the Undersiders, ashamed at what she was about to admit. But she pressed on. “I thought I would use your mistake to get more info on you guys for the good guys. I didn’t plan it and everything is still new to me. But then you guys…you really surprised me. You hadn’t even met me and yet here you are, showing up out of costume and even telling me your names. You’re all seem really nice, so I can’t in good conscience join you guys. I’m sorry.”  
  
Taylor knelt down and picked up the lunchbox full of cash and stood up, offering it back. Lisa chuckled and pushed it back into Taylor’s hands in refusal.  
  
“Thank you for your honesty, but you don’t need to heroically give us back our gift just because you feel guilty about it. You really did help us in a big way last night” Lisa said, laughing. She wasn’t mad? Taylor looked again at the other Undersiders. Alec looked a little offended, but otherwise didn’t seem too bothered, considering. Brian…he looked angry, even if he wasn’t saying anything, Taylor noted with a sinking feeling.  
  
She dropped her hand still carrying the two grand in cash to her side, her mask in her other hand, feeling awkward. She felt like she just did the right thing, but she wasn’t sure what to do or say next.  
  
Lisa glanced at the two boys and cut in before either of them could say anything. “How about this: we’ll talk about this amongst ourselves and get back to you if we still want you to join us.”  
  
“You can’t be fucking serious,” Alec drawled as Brian glared at Lisa. Taylor stared, dumbfounded.  
  
_But I just straight-up told them I’m a hero, an enemy! Why on earth would they want me to join at this point?! I’m not a criminal!_ She thought.  
  
Lisa met her eyes and nodded, still wearing her grin, as if she acknowledged the thoughts running through Taylor’s head.  
  
“I think you’ll find that our little group gets up to a lot less unobjectionable activity than you might think, despite what you may hear about through the news,” Lisa said cheerfully. “We even get a say in what jobs we accept from the boss, and he doesn’t pressure us into it when we give our answer.”  
  
“You’re telling an awful lot to someone we might be going up against,” Brian finally growled, jerking a thumb at Taylor. “And I’m already voting ‘no’ to this. We can’t trust her.”  
  
“We’ll discuss this later, Brian,” Lisa said, then turned back towards Taylor, who was rooted to the spot. “So what do you say to working something out, assuming I can convince the others you’re worth a shot?”  
  
“I doubt you’re going to convince me, Lisa, and we’re definitely going to be discussing why you knew but didn’t see fit to tell us,” Brian interrupted, folding his brawny arms and scowling. Lisa rolled her eyes tolerantly. Alec said nothing.  
  
“Um, I’ll need to think about this,” Taylor allowed, wondering why Lisa was going to such great lengths to bring her in. The feeling of being wanted…it had been a long time since anybody stuck their neck out like this for her. It was a nice feeling, although she wasn’t sure how to feel about Brian, Alec, and Rachel being against her, even if Lisa put a nice face on things.  
  
“Think it over, we’ll get back to you,” Lisa said. Brian shook his head and Alec swigged the last of his soda before chucking it over the side of the roof into the alley below. The Undersider boys moved towards the fire escape. The meeting was clearly over. Lisa glanced at their backs before stepping closer to Taylor.  
  
“Want to go somewhere? My treat. There’s a lot that you don’t know that I think would be worth your while to learn, whether or not you join the Undersiders proper,” Lisa offered.  
  
Taylor looked at her for a long moment before nodding, feeling like she was in free-fall and that anything went at this point in her out-of-control life. Only…  
  
“I brought someone with me. He’s waiting for me a little ways away. He’s uh, ready if I had yelled for help or something like that,” Taylor confessed. Lisa nodded, because of course she knew. She knew everything. “Is it okay if he comes with? He didn’t have to come back me up, and I’m sure he’d be fine with you, villain or not.”  
  
Lisa’s eyebrows rose a little, but didn’t seem put off. “I wouldn’t mind at all,” she said before beckoning over to the fire escape.  
  
They made their way down, where Brian and Alec were clearly waiting for Lisa. Alec looked up and down the alley and Brian ignored Taylor, looking at Lisa.  
  
“I’m going to be going out for a little bit,” Lisa told them. “I’ll be back later.”  
  
Brian shook his head with exasperation, sighing. “Don’t think you’re getting out of explaining why you felt the need to not keep your team in the loop, Lisa,” he said irritably before turning and heading down the alley, away from where Taylor had traveled to get here. Alec followed, casually waving a hand over his shoulder.  
  
“I, uh, have a backpack with my regular clothes over that way, and Saitama’s waiting over there,” Taylor pointed in the opposite direction.  
  
“Lead the way,” Lisa said, nodding.  
  
They walked down the alleyway, arriving at the dumpster where Taylor hid her backpack.  
  
“Uh, give me a minute to change. Watch for anyone coming?” Taylor asked, before seeing Lisa nod before turning her back to her.  
  
She pulled off all of her armor, stripping down to her underwear and pulling out her clothes that she brought with her. She hastily yanked everything on and stuffed her costume into her bag, along with the lunchbox full of money that Lisa had insisted that she keep. She hefted the backpack and adjusted her glasses. Lisa looked back at her.  
  
Taylor nodded, and they walked out of the alley to where Saitama was waiting.  
  
Saitama saw the pair of girls coming out of the alley.  
  
“Hey, meeting went well? Who’s the blondie?” Saitama ventured, hefting his shopping bags with all of his worldly possessions. Lisa smiled.  
  
“This blondie’s name is Lisa,” she said sardonically. “And you must be Saitama.”  
  
“The meeting went, uh, well, I guess it could have gone worse, under the circumstances,” Taylor answered. “Thanks for acting as my backup, even if nothing happened. Lisa wants to go grab dinner. Would you like to come along?”  
  
“Uh,” Saitama muttered, trying to not look like an idiot who was very close to being completely broke.  
  
“Don’t worry about it, I’m paying,” Lisa said knowingly. She was studying him now, thrown off by the kind of information she was reading from Saitama. Neither Taylor or Saitama seemed to notice.  
  
_This was Taylor’s backup, huh? My power’s giving me information that doesn’t make any sense about this guy. I wonder what his story is,_ Lisa wondered.  Buying him dinner would give her an excellent opportunity to case this guy out. Where did he fit in all this?  
  
“Oh! Thanks,” Saitama recovered, oblivious to being the object of scrutiny. “So, where are we headed?”


	8. Burgers 'n' Fries

In the end, they hit up a decent place with a booth that ensured private conversation to Lisa’s satisfaction. After some deliberation, Lisa got a burger with fries, Taylor got macaroni and cheese, and Saitama got a steak sandwich with fries. The server finished writing down their orders and left.  
  
There was a pause.  
  
“I’m kind of wondering why you’re going through all this trouble when you only just met me,” Taylor spoke first.  
  
“Bah, it’s nothing. Call it making sure that good potential doesn’t go to waste,” Lisa demurred with a wave of a hand. She took a sip of her water. “You’re both newbies, so there’s some stuff you guys should know about the local area.”  
  
Taylor simply nodded, while Saitama simply rested his hand on his fist, looking kind of bored.  
  
_Great,_ Saitama thought. _Exposition._  
  
“Strictly speaking, there’s two nominal ‘sides’, the heroes and the villains. Technically, there’s also the rogues, but you can think of those guys as falling on a spectrum in-between. The heroes are the Parahuman Response Team: the Protectorate and their junior leagues, the Wards. It’s a franchise operation, which leads to there being an arm here in Brockton Bay. The local franchises are led by Armsmaster and Aegis, respectively,” Lisa began, tailoring the beginning for Saitama. Apparently, he had never even heard of the PRT, which her power told her that he wasn’t lying, which made his appearance here all the more inexplicable. Just who did Taylor pick up earlier today? “Oh yeah, I almost forgot to say, but it's worth mentioning that there's also the local group of independent heroes who call themselves the New Wave whose gimmick is that they operate without keeping their civilian identities a secret. On the other side, you have the villains. These are the vast majority of capes, although the heroes don’t like to talk about that fact. You get a whole galaxy of organizations, alliances, and solo acts, most of which has no bearing on the local scene, although some out-of-towners swing through every now and then. Our city hosts several factions. Now, the local villains include Empire Eighty-Eight, the Azn Bad Boys, Faultine’s Crew, The Merchants, Uber and Leet, Coil, and yours truly along with the rest of the Undersiders.”  
  
Taylor nodded again. Most of this first bit wasn’t new to her, cape geek that she was, so she supposed it was for Saitama’s benefit. Saitama simply took a swig of his water. Lisa continued, uninterrupted.  
  
“The E88: white supremacist supervillains, their leader is Kaiser. The ABB: a gang formerly led by a tough cape named Lung before he got taken down by our newest hero last night,” Lisa gestured to Taylor with a playful smile. Saitama looked at Taylor with his eyebrows raised.  
  
“Wait, so you’re a cape, too?” Saitama interrupted. He smiled. “Nice work. You must be really strong, yourself.”  
  
“Um. Thanks,” Taylor muttered, turning pink at the praise. _You don’t know the half of it._ She took a long swig of her water to give her something to do.  
  
“Anyway,” Lisa continued. “Faultline is a supervillain who is the leader of a group of superpowered mercenaries. The Merchants,” she curled her mouth with distaste, “are a gang of drug addicted capes led by Skidmark. Uber and Leet are a couple of dorks who run around committing crimes dressed up as video game characters and livestreaming themselves when they do it. Coil has this organization of ex-military personnel at his command, but he’s mostly quiet and nobody knows what exactly his power is. As for us-”  
  
“Wait, what do you mean ‘what his power is’?” Saitama interrupted again, scratching his head and furrowing his eyebrows.  
  
Lisa stopped, and fixed her gaze intently on Saitama. Taylor looked over at him, frowning.  
  
“What do you mean by that?” Lisa asked slowly.  
  
“I mean, it’s just that power is being strong. Sure, there’s psychics, but they always seem to be boring and their power is nothing special, even if you wouldn’t say that they’re common. I guess monsters have powers sometimes, but they ain’t shit because they aren’t strong, either. Uh…” Saitama trailed off, glancing between the girls, uncomfortable with their mirroring expressions of bewilderment. “What?”  
  
“Do you know what a parahuman is?” Lisa asked, her eyes boring into him.  
  
“No idea,” Saitama said uncertainly. “What’s that?”  
  
Taylor’s mouth hung open, water forgotten. She had dismissed his confusion earlier in the heat of trying to find backup, any backup for her meeting with the Undersiders, because he had seemed to know what he was talking about even if he had never heard of the term ‘cape’ or ‘parahuman’ before, but now… Saitama didn’t seem to be joking. A nervous knot formed in her stomach. How the hell did he know about heroes, but not powers? What planet was he from?  
  
“A parahuman is a human being who gained powers through moments of crisis or high-level stress or trauma of some sort in what’s known as a ‘trigger event’. No two parahumans have access the the exact same power, and those powers range wildly. There’s twelve rough categories of these powers, like Striker, Tinker, Stranger, Shaker, and so on. Faultline’s power is the ability to separate molecular bonds in any non-living material to make cuts or holes with a touch, for example. She’s what we call a Striker. Remember Leet? His ability is a tinker power that lets him build any kind of technology he wants that’s beyond anything that scientists and engineers can recreate or reverse-engineer, but everything he makes has progressively greater chances of malfunctioning if he’s built it before. He has a shitty tinker power, but you get the idea. Kaiser can make metal blades appear out of any surface, so he’d be tentatively said to have a Shaker power. And the list goes on and on. There’s thousands of us, tens of thousands. Does any of this sound familiar to you?” Lisa pressed.  
  
“Am I supposed to?” Saitama asked. He was goggling now, clearly lost.  
  
Lisa stared him down. Taylor looked on, transfixed.  
  
“My god. You really have no idea. About parahumans, about capes, about anything,” Lisa breathed. “Do you-”  
  
She gestured and put a finger to her lips. Nine seconds later, the server reappeared, bearing their orders and asking if they needed anything else for the moment. They said no, and the server walked away. They all awkwardly began eating in silence. After a few bites, Lisa spoke again.  
  
“I’m sorry, but there’s no delicate way to ask: Do you have amnesia? Do you know how you got here?”  
  
“Hey, my memory is just fine, thanks,” Saitama scowled, lowering the sandwich in his hands. “All I know is that I was fighting this giant monster in the middle of nowhere, which turned to be another fat letdown, and then I was standing along a highway before hitching a ride into town this morning.”  
  
He went back to his sandwich. Lisa blinked.  
  
“Saitama, where are you from?” Taylor cut in abruptly. He swallowed another bite.  
  
“City Z. You wouldn’t happen to know where it is, do you?” Saitama asked hopefully.  
  
“Saitama… I’ve never heard of City Z,” Taylor answered slowly. Something clicked. “The map room.”  
  
Lisa looked at her questioningly.  
  
“I met Saitama in the map room at the library today,” Taylor said in shock. “You were looking for City Z.” This wasn’t a question.  
  
Saitama nodded shortly.  
  
“But…you said you’re strong, and you just said that you fought a monster, so doesn’t that mean you have powers, too?” Taylor asked, picking at her macaroni and cheese.  
  
“I’m pretty sure I don’t have powers like anything you’re talking about. But I really am strong. Well…” Saitama began saying before trailing off, abruptly looking self-conscious. “I’m actually too strong, if you really want to know.”  
  
More silence, so he continued, plopping his sandwich back down on his plate.  
  
“Nothing’s challenging for me anymore. At this point, all it takes is one punch to beat any monster I come across. I can’t even remember the last time I fought with all my strength and with my life on the line. _It’s so fucking boring,_ ” Saitama groaned, planting his face in his hands.  
  
Lisa’s mouth was hanging open by the end of it. She closed it, and then opening her mouth again as if to say something, before closing it again. Taylor’s temper flared.  
  
“You’re full of shit,” she spat. “I knew it.”  
  
“Taylor, wait,” Lisa hastily jumped back in, seeing the stunned look on Saitama’s face. “I’ve been looking at him this entire time and he hasn’t lied once.”  
  
“So he’s crazy and full of shit,” Taylor growled. Lisa shook her head insistently, frowning. Taylor’s expression became uncertain.  
  
“He’s either lying, which - with my power - is impossible, or he’s just some guy who has very convincing delusions, which has its own tells that I can pick up,” Lisa explained.  
  
“You actually believe this?!” Taylor gestured at Saitama, outraged, her food forgotten.  
  
“Whoa, hey, I’m just saying that the possibility that he’s crazy or a liar is remote, is all,” Lisa said placatingly.  
  
“I’m right here, you know,” Saitama interrupted defensively, scratching his bald head.  
  
“I don’t believe this,” Taylor muttered, picking her spoon back up and shoveling a bite into her mouth and chewing angrily.  
  
They all uneasily resumed eating, saying nothing else as they cleaned their plates.  
  
“Look,” Lisa said. “There’s a simple way to see if Saitama is telling the truth.”  
  
Taylor shot her a glower, but didn’t say anything while chewing. Lisa took that as her cue to continue.  
  
“Saitama, how would you feel about giving us a little demonstration?” Lisa asked, her lips curling at last back into a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, the response has been overwhelming! Thank you all so much for reading!


	9. The Gang Visits a Junkyard

It took some coaxing over their initial objections, but Lisa managed to persuade both Taylor and Saitama into a trip further out into the Docks, somewhere with some privacy. Lisa had a feeling that they would need room, too, so she paid their bill with a generous tip and led them deeper into the Docks, towards the Trainyard and the Boat Graveyard.  
  
There were hardly any people to be seen. Lots of guttered warehouses and vacant lots before they arrived at their destination. A junkyard, a big one. It was littered with cargo ships that authorities had managed to pull out of the Graveyard years ago, and lots of discarded metal containers that would be carried on both ships and trains, and several abandoned train cars besides. All told, it took up dozens of acres to a side, with wide lanes in between all the stacks of scrapped industrial vehicles and parts.  
  
Taylor, for her part, was still sullen from the diner, and hadn’t said much after she told Lisa she would come with them, if only to get her to stop badgering her. Saitama seemed more of a go-with-the-flow kind of person, who after being talked into putting on a show fell into comfortable idle chit-chat about how shitty this part of Brockton Bay was with Lisa, how it weirdly reminded him of his hometown after they condemned his City as unfit for human habitation due to chronic incursions of monsters. Lisa, for her part, took it in stride. She hoped that her power was correct in telling her that none of what he was telling her was a lie or even a half-truth. Hopefully, he could corroborate his story and Taylor would come around, too.  
  
“Uh, give me a moment. I don’t want to ruin these clothes,” Saitama said, stopping just after they arrived at the junkyard, and wandered over to a nearby alcove to change back into his costume.  
  
“I don’t know why you’re going to so much trouble for him,” Taylor grumbled, her hands in her hoodie’s pockets.  
  
Lisa looked over, thoughtful. “I don’t see what the harm would be. Either I get to find out that I’m wrong about something for once, or we just found a guy who is as good as he says he is,” Lisa said.  
  
“How are you so sure, anyway? This guy frankly sounds nuts. What’s ‘too strong’ even supposed to mean? How would that even be a problem?” Taylor asked, her voice heavy with skepticism.  
  
“I knew about you, didn’t I?” Lisa smirked, to Taylor’s chagrin. “It’s…part of my power. I would appreciate you not go spreading this around, but I can find things out and extrapolate.”  
  
Taylor’s eyes widened. That was a good point. Still though…  
  
“So when you look at Saitama…” she trailed off.  
  
“I could tell that he’s an unusual guy, even before he said anything that hinted at the fact that he’s from another world. There’s no such thing as City Z, period. And Saitama doesn’t seem like he’s crazy, despite your reservations. I can tell that he has some kind of power, but something’s off about it, in a way that I’ve never picked up from other capes. I will grant that ‘being too strong’ is a weird thing for anybody to gripe about, but again, we’ll see. Ah,” Lisa turned to look at the alcove. “Here he comes.”  
  
Saitama stepped back out of the alcove, grocery bags in hand, one arm carrying a bundle of the clothes Taylor lent him earlier. He stopped in front of her, offering the clothes and the bag with the flip-flops.  
  
“Thanks,” he said simply.  
  
“Uh, yeah, no problem,” Taylor said as she scrambled to pull her backpack off of her back and putting the bundle and the flip-flops inside. Lisa was taking in his costume with a critical eye.  
  
“Saitama, what’s the material made out of? It doesn’t look like anything I’ve encountered before,” she asked. More anomalies, more questions.  
  
“What, this?” Saitama gathered some of his cape in his hand. “My clothes kept getting ripped up and messy in the old days, back when I was just starting out, so eventually my tailor made me this as a gift for saving his store, even though he ended up retiring anyway. Much better, if I say so myself, but I couldn’t tell you what the old man used. Some kind of experimental military-grade stuff, though I have no idea how he got ahold of it to begin with.”  
  
He let go of his cape, shrugging. “Anyway, what’s this test about? I don’t what’s so important that a pair of strangers need to know. You said that I’m some kind of unusual guy, but I’m just a hero who’s serious about their hobby, that’s all.”  
  
“I have my own reasons to verify if you’re telling the truth,” Lisa said easily, though her heart was beating a touch faster at his casually commenting on being able to hear her. _He heard me, even from beyond the range of normal human hearing. Some kind of enhanced senses?_  
  
She beckoned, and they walked deeper into the trainyard for a few minutes until they came to a clearing with twisted bodies of cars and shipping containers stacked on all sides. About an acre, if Taylor had to guess.  
  
“This reminds me of another time somebody wanted to test my power,” Saitama commented. “This scientist guy wanted to see how well a human would stack up against his greatest inhuman creation, and all he ended up doing was almost making me miss a bargain sale at my supermarket. Hmmm,” he looked around.  
  
“I don’t really know what kind of tests you have in mind, but I can do some of the stuff that the Hero’s Association asked me to do when I tried out to join them,” he said.  
  
“Like what?” Lisa asked. Taylor said nothing, looking on with her hands shoved back into her hoodie’s pockets.  
  
“Hmm, well, there was the fifteen-hundred meter dash. I guess I can do that?”  
  
Lisa nodded, and pulled out her phone and activated her stopwatch app. She drew a line in the dirt, and stepped back.  
  
“Alright, how about, say, ten laps around this clearing, stopping after the line on your last lap. On my mark,” Lisa said.  
  
Saitama nodded and stepped up to right behind the line, doing nothing else to prepare to run.  
  
Taylor scoffed quietly, leaning with her back up against a container. _He’s not even taking this seriously,_ she thought derisively.  
  
“Go!” Lisa yelled, activating the stopwatch. The next instant, her yell was lost as a sonic boom drowned everything out and nearly caused Taylor to jump out of her skin. She hardly had time to look away from where Saitama was just standing when she caught a slight glimpse of yellow and white that disappeared just as quickly. She looked down where Saitama was supposed to be going in his lap around the edge of the clearing, and she gasped involuntarily. There were deep trackmarks, with what was clearly his boot-marks stamped into each one. And from the looks of it, those prints gave her the insane idea that he was already several laps into it. The air was filled with the sound of rushing wind, howling from the disturbance that Taylor tried and failed to track with her naked eyes.  
  
_WHAT THE FUCK,_ Taylor only had time to think before there was a whoosh of air, abruptly cutting off the steady howling, and everything quieted back down. Saitama was standing just in front of the line in the dirt, all but completely obscured in all the newly churned-up ground that nearly circled around the whole clearing. His cape billowed as it settled back down along his back. Lisa looked dazed as he tapped her phone again, stopping the watch. Taylor could imagine what her own expression must look like after witnessing a stunt like this. Lisa looked down at her screen, blinking several times at the result. Taylor’s ears were ringing in the silence.  
  
“You…you, uh,” Lisa stumbled over her words, trading glances between her phone screen and Saitama. “You just ran roughly twenty-six hundred meters in like four seconds. And as far as I can tell, you didn’t shift into another kind of form so that your body could absorb the blows without breaking every bone in your body and snapping your muscles like dry rubber bands.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Saitama said, sounding very blase about the whole thing. “I trained a lot to get to this strong.”  
  
Lisa and Taylor both stared, unsure of what to make of that. Taylor was aware of a cape in the Protectorate in Brockton Bay called Velocity, and he ran really fast, but there were trade-offs. He phases into a Breaker state in order to run at superhuman speed, for the reasons that Lisa just described but the impact that he could affect on this reality would be proportionately diminished. This didn’t seem to be the case with Saitama at all, where if anything he was faster than Velocity on record and, as evidenced by how much impact his feet left behind in the ground. Even more insane still, Saitama looked like he was in no worse shape than before, not even out of breath from such an exertion. There’s another local cape part of the Protectorate named Battery, who also exhibited bursts of speed and strength, but only after charging up for several seconds at a time, expending the energy really quickly before needing to pause and recharge. From the looks of things, Saitama went from zero to supersonic with no preamble…  
  
“What else can you do?” Taylor asked, overwhelmed. Saitama paused to think.  
  
“Well, at the Heroes Association, they also had me lift weights and hit a punching machine. They also measured my vertical jump and had me throw a shot-put ball, and some other silly stuff like playing a whack-a-mole game,” Saitama cupped his chin thoughtfully.  
  
“That…doesn’t sound terribly comprehensive,” Taylor uttered, unsure of what else to say. He glanced over at her, and shrugged.  
  
“Eh, it was what it was. They also had me do this boring written test and essay, which I don’t see how that has to do with being a hero. But I got in anyway, so whatever. I get the feeling sometimes that they don’t know what they’re doing, but as long as I keep fighting monsters, it’s not too much of a hassle,” he said.  
  
“I’d uh, like to hear more about this Hero Association sometime,” Taylor said.  
  
“I won’t ask you to do any kind of jumping test, because I have the sneaking suspicion that you can easily jump extremely high, and that would attract attention having someone see you doing that,” Lisa said, glancing around. “How much can you lift? Can you fly?”  
  
“Anything, really, though it’s been a long time since I’ve stopped keeping track,” Saitama answered, as if it were just a matter of fact. “I can’t fly, though. That’d be silly, because people don’t have wings. There’s some psychics back at home that can make themselves fly, but it’s not really a big deal, in my opinion.”  
  
“How about that train over there?” Lisa pointed at a beat-up and rusting train engine laying on its side on the other side of the clearing, partially embedded in the ground. “Just so I can confirm.”  
  
“I don’t see why not,” Saitama shrugged again. They all walked over, Taylor and Lisa stopping a ways back to give Saitama and the train engine some room.  
  
He looked back, seeing them watching him expectantly.  
  
He turned back to the partially-buried locomotive, and pulled it out of the ground as casually as a gardener weeding their flowerbed and lifted it over is head, his form hilariously overshadowed by how huge the engine was in comparison. He gently set it back down, tossing it back down with a tortured groan of twisting metal. His cape billowed out from the displaced air sweeping around him and out to where Taylor and Lisa were standing, looking on in amazement. He walked back over to them and stopped.  
  
“How was that?” Saitama asked.  
  
“That train weighed over 500 tons and you just lifted it up like it was a paper cutout,” Lisa said grinning like a fool. “Alexandria may have you beat there, but I suspect you can lift many times more that amount if you wanted. You could probably give her trouble if you two found yourselves in an arm-wrestling competition.”  
  
“Yeah, that was really nothing,” Saitama said, nodding casually.  
  
Lisa cocked her head, looking away at the direction they had come in.  
  
“We should go, this attracted some attention and it would be awkward to stick around and explain any of this,” Lisa said urgently and started walking briskly away. “There’s another way into the junkyard that we can go through.”  
  
“Eh, alright,” Saitama said, walking after her. Taylor followed them without speaking, her mind racing trying to process what she just saw Saitama do with casual ease that, if he was to be believed, was the least of what he was capable of. As reluctant as she was to admit it, it lent credence to his testimony that he wasn’t delusional, that he really was from another world of some sort. She jogged to catch up with Saitama and Lisa, leaving the clearing behind them.  
  
“Listen, um,” Taylor began. Oh, she wasn’t good at this, but she pressed on. “I’m sorry I called you crazy earlier. Um. I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that anybody can be ‘too strong’, or that they’re from another world entirely different from our parallel dimension Aleph, but I can see that you aren’t just making things up for whatever reason. I guess you really are a cape, even if you didn’t seem like the type. Uh, sorry again.” Taylor finished before she babbled any more.  
  
“It’s fine, I have trouble wrapping my own head around being in another world, myself,” Saitama said breezily. “Being too strong is a huge pain in the ass, but sometimes I think about my starting out to become a hero all those years ago, and I realize that I wouldn’t have changed a thing, since I guess I do good with being as strong as I am.”  
  
“Y-yeah. About that. You just decided one day that you wanted to be a hero? Did you trigger and decide to become one?” Taylor asked shyly. Lisa slowed her pace to place her on the other side of Saitama, clearly interested.  
  
“I guess so, yeah. I was an ordinary guy who just failed another interview at some office business. I did pretty lousy in the interview, and it wasn’t the first, so I was walking home pretty depressed, when suddenly this large guy with a crab body with regular legs for whatever reason encountered me, hunting for this kid for some kind revenge. He saw that I was depressed, and let me go out of pity. Anyway, a few minutes later I encounter the kid who matched the crab’s description and before I could warn him off, the crab finds us. I decided pretty quickly that I didn’t want the kid to get killed by this weirdo even if it wasn’t nice of the kid to have drawn nipples in sharpie on the crab’s shell on his chest while he was sleeping in a public park,” Saitama began, before being interrupted with a cackle of laughter from Lisa and snorting from Taylor at the image of drawing such a juvenile thing as nipples on a crab monster with permanent marker. It was just too ludicrous, but then again that was something they were both coming to expect from Saitama. He chuckled with them, remembering the sight.  
  
“So the crab has the kid and me cornered, and the crab even offered to spare my life if I gave up the kid to his mercy, when I remembered how much I wanted to be a hero when I was a kid, back before I grew up and tried becoming a corporate salaryman. A hero so strong they could fight and could always be counted on to defeat any monster that they went up against. I guess I went a little crazy, I found myself fighting the crab guy, and he was kicking my ass before I got a good hit in and beat him. That fight…it woke up something inside of me. As the kid thanked me for rescuing him, I decided right then and there that I would do whatever it took become a hero.”  
  
He shrugged, and continued as they kept walking. “I dunno about a trigger event or anything like that. It sounds like you’d have to go through some kind of huge ordeal, but something like that never happened to me, and I never heard of it until you told me about it. All I know is that I didn’t start out as powerful as I am now. Truth be told, I was pretty weak compared to the average person, so I had gotten lucky in my fight with that crab guy. So I resolved to train as hard as I could, starting the very next day afterward. No matter what, I relentlessly kept training my body and mind, even when I was tired and sore. Eventually, my hair fell out after like a year and a half of training every single day. Before I knew it, I was much stronger. I started going out and finding monsters to fight, and fought them even as the difference between my strength and theirs grew and grew. The old man gave me my cape and the rest, well, that was history. It’s been about three and a half years since I started down this road, and I got my wish, in a way. Who knew becoming what I would become would end up being as boring as it is, though?” Saitama finished with a grimace. “It’s just a hobby, but damn if it doesn’t get mindnumbing sometimes, day in and day out of the same thing.”  
  
“Fighting evil…as a hobby?” Taylor asked wondrously, digesting this information. “I never thought of it that way.”  
  
“Sure, it’s like anything else you pursue because you like doing it, you know?” Saitama nodded.  
  
“That still sounds like you triggered at some point,” Lisa argued lightheartedly. “Some capes don’t remember triggering, although there’s always an event that goes with their powers activating for the first time. But I’ve never heard of a power that you train, per se. So that’s pretty weird.”  
  
“Dunno what to tell you,” Saitama said. “Aside from the crab guy, there wasn’t anything in particular that made me who I am. Just getting up every day and grinding it out, that’s all I learned.”  
  
“Saitama, I kind of doubt that anyone can get to be as strong as you are just by training,” Taylor chuckled, as the group came within sight of the exit from the junkyard, this one placing them close by the trains that brought cargo in and out of Brockton Bay. She glanced at Saitama’s costume that seemed somehow less silly-looking in the wake of his demonstration proving that he wasn’t all talk, when a thought occurred to her.  
  
“If you’re from another world, and you just got here, then where are you staying?”  
  
Lisa’s face dawned, as if she had forgotten in all the commotion. Saitama rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, as if he had been hoping that nobody would ask.  
  
“Uh, well. I don’t really have any place to go at the moment,” he confessed to a chorus of surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	10. A Day In the Life

_This has to be the most absurd twenty-four hour span of time that I’ve ever experienced,_ Taylor thought as she, Lisa, and Saitama hashed out where he would spend the night tonight as they all walked away from the junkyard and back towards the Docks. Confronting one of the baddest motherfuckers in town by chance on her very first night patrol and having her hand in bringing him to justice, meeting villains that seemed more friendly than they initially appeared, and meeting a cape from another world who hadn’t seemed like much at first glance. It was nice, in a way, but still silly.  
  
“So I have a place that I was using as a safehouse, but I can stay there for as long as you need until you get yourself set up,” Lisa finished saying.  
  
“I dunno…” Saitama mulled.  
  
“Taylor can’t put you up; that guy who gave you a ride sounds nice, but I don’t think you want to impose on him; letting you stay in the guest room at our…heh…hideout is right out, because I doubt you want to be a villain and the others would probably object. This is the sensible thing,” Lisa elaborated.  
  
“But aren’t you a little young to have an apartment to yourself? What’s your story, anyway?” Saitama asked skeptically.  
  
Lisa momentarily looked surprised, and her face darkened before lightening up again as she slipped back into her easy-going demeanor.  
  
“That’s probably a story for another time, I’m afraid,” she said casually. “Anyway, I got my GED and it’s all above-board. Unless you feel so strongly that you want to rough it.”  
  
“If you say so,” Saitama conceded. Taylor glanced at her watch.  
  
“Shoot, I need to get going,” she said. Her dad would be expecting her and she wanted to keep up appearances so that he wouldn’t suspect that there was any trouble going on, that the bullies at school weren’t getting to her.  
  
“Oh! That reminds me,” Lisa exclaimed, pulling a different cell-phone out of her purse and offering it to Taylor, smiling. “I know you don’t have a phone, and this already has my number programmed into it.”  
  
“Why?” Taylor asked awkwardly. She knew that if her dad saw her with a phone, he’d be really unhappy about it, to put it lightly. The sight of them made her uneasy, herself, even though there was no good reason for it. What happened to her mom was a freak accident, anyway, but it was hard to shake the irrational feeling that they were kind of dangerous. Lisa’s smile grew wider.  
  
“So we can feel in touch, silly,” she said teasingly. “This was fun, even if we never quite got around to what I brought you out to talk about.”  
  
She left the cell-phone hanging in her hand, waiting for Taylor to take it.  
  
“R-really? Oh, well,” Taylor floundered for a moment before getting over herself for a moment. She reached over and plucked the cell-phone out of Lisa’s waiting hand, and slipped it into her pocket. Her dad didn’t have to know about it. Something small but warm blossomed in her chest. “…Thanks. I had fun, too.”  
  
Lisa pulled back, a satisfied grin resting on her face. “Don’t mention it. I’ll text you later. Oh! You’ll probably want the charger for it, too.” She fished that out of her purse and passed the cord to Taylor.  
  
“Thanks again. See you later. Um, it was nice to meet you, Lisa. Saitama, it was also nice to meet you, too. Thanks again for coming with me and the, well, the advice. You helped a lot,” Taylor said. She pulled off her backpack again, reaching in and pulling out the clothes and flip-flops she had lent to Saitama earlier and offered them to him. “You can keep these for a little while longer until you get other clothes. You probably don’t want to go grocery-shopping in your cape.”  
  
“Thanks,” Saitama said, gratefully. “And no problem. I had the time, and I guess you remind me a little of myself when I first took up my hobby. See you around.”  
  
Taylor allowed herself to smile a little bit. What a truly weird day today was turning out to be. Without another word, she walked off in a different direction, towards home where her dad would be arriving soon. She waved a hand over her shoulder and turned a corner homeward-bound. She was in a better mood than she remembered being in quite a while. There was definitely a spring in her step. She started planning what she was going to cook for dinner tonight. Something good, she decided. If she hurried, perhaps she could beat her dad home and have it going by the time he arrived. A nice little surprise for him. She still wasn’t sure yet what to do with the two thousand dollars sitting in her backpack, or whether it would be ethical to do anything with it. She put the thought off, leaving it for later when she was home and underway with cooking supper. She was in a good spot right now. A villain decided to be her friend, for whatever reason, and a hero that she randomly met seemed to think the villain was alright, so she trusted her instinct that Lisa wasn’t somebody who would try to hurt her like Emma started doing, all those months ago, even if she was still suspicious of relaxing this much around people she only just met. Lung was still in jail, and Armsmaster owed her a favor for it. The Undersiders, they hadn’t seemed overly hostile even if Brian seemed irritated that they met under false pretenses. She hoped that it wouldn’t worsen, but then, Lisa seemed to be on her side, so it hopefully wouldn’t. And Saitama…Taylor still wasn’t entirely sure what his deal was, but had went out on a limb for her, even if he had only just met her. He said some pretty strange stuff, but she was already starting to roll with it. Oddly insightful at times, even if he looked like he took nothing seriously. She found herself glad she had summoned up the courage to talk to him. Who knows what might have happened if she never ran into him?  
  
Pretty okay circumstances, all told. She didn’t realize that she was quietly humming to herself. What a weird, good day.

* * *

 

The next day was a blur for Taylor. She had decided not to skip school again and for once, it felt like the bullies had less of an impact on her than before. Sure, they still tried to get a rise out of her. They didn’t do anything overt today, other than talking rather obviously about her and looking at her to see if they got a reaction out of her. Small potatoes, compared to most days. She was paired up by Mr. Gladly with Greg for a group assignment yet again, but it didn’t bother her quite as much as it would normally have. Everything felt absurd, compared to her day yesterday. Yesterday had been nerve-wracking, but ultimately nice. She spoke of none of it to nobody, but silently clung to the memories like a talisman; it was never far from her thoughts in the moment-to-moment. Here in school, nothing had changed for her, but somehow everything was cast in a different light.  
  
Taylor was eating lunch again, another couple of sandwiches, in a boy’s restroom in a different part of the school than where the bullies had found her last friday. She had slipped into the boy’s restroom when she was sure nobody was watching her. They knew that she had been eating lunch in the girl’s restroom, so that was a no-go. Hopefully, that would throw them off her trail for at least the next couple of weeks. However, Taylor had a feeling that even this new strategy wouldn’t last forever, and in the long-run the places she was able to hide in were dwindling.  
  
_How am I going to make it through two more years of this?_ Taylor ruminated as she chewed. She remembered Lisa mentioning having a GED…and her birthday was coming up in a couple of months. Her dad wouldn’t exactly be thrilled, but he knew that she was having a terrible time in school. Faced with the choice, he’d almost certainly support her if it meant getting her away from the bullies for good. He’d want her to go to college, but Taylor honestly felt ambivalent about it. Even if there wasn’t the exciting prospect of having all the time in the world to pursue being a cape, she was feeling rather burnt-out from being in the school system, period. Perhaps in a few years after she left this place behind, she would start to feel differently, though right now she kind of doubted it. Now that she had the GED as a possible exit strategy, she couldn’t get the thought out of her head.  
  
She finished her second sandwich and washed it down with a couple cartons of juice before pulling out her copy of The City of Rain. It was the first story in the Lambsbridge Chronicles and she rather liked it so far, even if it was pretty macabre at times. She passed the rest of the period in this manner, until it was almost over. She waited for the restroom to empty out and then waited two minutes before slipping quietly out of the door and walked down the hall away from the restroom. She checked her surroundings, and it seemed like the coast was clear.  
  
She drifted off to her next class, pondering who she would have to go to if she wanted to go forward with her plan of getting a GED. She’ll have to ask Lisa what she did, next time Taylor saw her. It occurred to her that she wanted to go on another night patrol. Maybe Saitama would want to tag along? She’d have to ask, assuming she got ahold of him again soon. She resolved to text Lisa and ask her where she could find him.

* * *

 

Saitama woke up bright and early, as was his habit, in Lisa’s apartment. It was a nice place, tucked out of the way in the downtown area. There was even a doorman by the name of Cooper, which Saitama thought was quite the novelty.  
  
Still though, being cooped up was never his style, so he put on his costume and went out, wandering around and exploring the city. Lisa had stayed overnight at the Undersider’s hideout, wherever that was, so she wasn’t around to tell him that he was being indiscreet. Something about a meeting, she had said, before handing him her spare key and leaving after bring him back and showing him her spare bedroom that he was going to sleep in.  
  
Brockton Bay was very different from the City metropolitan area, that was for sure. Lots of petty crime and overt gang activity. Saitama stepped in and broke up a couple of muggings and it hadn’t even been lunchtime yet. A group of asians had stopped him when he was walking through another neighborhood, telling him that this was their turf and blah blah. He socked the leader and the rest of them backed off, and he shrugged and walked away. About two hours later, he was in a different neighborhood when a pair of skinheads tried menacing him, saying something about how the E88 don’t take kindly to anybody, especially a dirty slope, roughing up their boys. Their attitude quickly changed when their knives snapped in their hands when they attempted to shank him, and he let them run away after giving them a stern talking-to about picking fights and how they should reconsider their life choices. What a weird place this city was, and that was saying something in comparison to his hometown where he encountered genocidal monsters on a regular basis. Saitama didn’t really know what to make of it.  
  
Saitama started getting bored around 4 o’clock and retraced his route back to Lisa’s apartment building, letting himself back inside, to the bemusement of the doorman.  
  
Inside, he found a note neatly folded on the dining room table from Lisa, along with a flip-phone laying right next to it.  
  
‘Saitama, I see that I’ve missed you, so I left you this note. Taylor wanted to get in touch with you, but seeing as you don’t have a cellphone, she asked me where you were. So I left her a number for the cellphone on the table. Keep it, you’ll probably need it. My number is also on it, in case you need to contact me. I’m going to be away for a few days for a job, so feel free to do whatever. See you around, Lisa.’  
  
He tossed the note back onto the table, and picked up the cellphone, flipping it open idly. One unread text. It was from Taylor.  
  
‘Hey Saitama, I’m going on another patrol tonight. Do you want to come with?’  
  
Saitama considered, before shrugging. Eh, why not?  
  
He texted back that sure, he’ll go on patrol with her.  
  
He put the phone away into his belt buckle, which had this handy compartment that could function as a pocket, and ventured over to the fridge in the kitchen where his last sandwich that Henry had given him was waiting.  
  
As he was chewing the last bite, his new phone chirped. He pulled it out and flipped it open.  
  
‘Cool. Meet me at the Boardwalk at midnight.’  
  
He put the cellphone away again, and wandered into the living room and flopped down onto the couch. He wondered how different television was here in this world.

* * *

Taylor arrived on the outskirts of the Boardwalk early, staking the area out in the shadows. She had taken extra care to be quiet in leaving the house. She didn’t want another repeat of being confronted and asked where she’d been. She hadn’t yet told him about her being a cape, having powers…any of that. She wanted to keep those aspects of her life separate, even if it was likely futile and that he would find out anyway at some point. She tried not to think about the day that her dad found out what she’d been keeping from him, and how worried he would be for her safety, especially if he connected the dots and realized that she confronted Lung on the night of his arrest and realized that she lied to him.  
  
It was just after midnight when Saitama showed up. He had gotten a little lost, but Taylor was able to find him easily enough with the discreet usage of her bugs in the area. She had belatedly remembered that Saitama wasn’t wholly familiar with the city yet, and she hadn’t told him where on the Boardwalk to meet her. So she went to him.  
  
“Hey,” she said quietly, stepping out of an alley near where he had parked himself waiting for her.  
  
“Hey,” she said, sitting up from the bench he was sitting on. “I didn’t recognize you in your costume. Kinda sinister-looking. So, what’s the plan?”  
  
“Right,” Taylor said. To business. “Lung got arrested only a couple days ago, but it doesn’t seem like the ABB is dissolving in their boss’s absence. I thought we’d scout them out and see what’s going on.”  
  
She beckoned, and walked away from the Boardwalk, into the direction of the roughest parts of the Docks where she figured there was the greatest chance of running into the ABB again, near where she fought Lung. She figured they’d go from there if they didn’t immediately find anyone.  
  
Saitama nodded and followed, his head gleaming off of the Boardwalk lights that were on even this late at night. He fell into step beside Taylor.  
  
Taylor pulled out a piece of silk-spun cloth as they were walking, and handed it to Saitama.  
  
“Since you don’t have a mask to go with the rest of your costume, I thought that you might need something to help hide your identity,” she said shyly. It was a half-mask and cobbled together from other bits of leftover material she had on hand, but she managed to pull together something decent in the hours before she left to meet up with Saitama.  
  
“Why do I need it?” he asked. He turned the mask over in his hands, studying it. Taylor glanced over at him, her brows furrowing under her mask.  
  
“Have you never worn a mask?” she asked incredulously. “Masks protect your identity, and if you have enemies, it protects people who you interact with in your civilian life.”  
  
“No, never saw the point,” he said, meeting her gaze. “But if it makes you feel better, I guess I can wear this.”  
  
He shrugged and put it on. It didn’t quite fit right, but it was close enough. It had a cap that covered his head and eyeholes that were wide enough for him to see out of without any obstruction.  
  
“This is kind of neat, like we’re in a crimefighting anime,” he said.  
  
“Yeah, you could say that,” Taylor said. She hadn’t pegged him as the type who was kind of a geek. “Oh! By the way, we need codenames if we run into people. There wouldn’t be much point to the masks if we just told everyone what our names are. I still haven’t figured out a name that I like, but I don’t like ‘Bug’ either, so I guess for now you can call me ‘Weaver’.”  
  
“Codenames? Hmmm. Well, call me anything you like, just don’t call me ‘Caped Baldy’,” Saitama said, rolling his eyes. He’d never live it down with that crappy name that the Hero Association stuck with him. Taylor chuckled in surprise. Hard to imagine anybody calling such a mighty cape ‘Caped Baldy’.  
  
“So why don’t you want to be called ‘Bug’, anyway? Seems like a weird name for someone who doesn’t seem anything like a bug, even if your costume would suggest that,” Saitama said conversationally as they got deeper into the Docks.  
  
“Uh…” Taylor said, eloquently. She shouldn’t have been caught off-guard by such a question. She hadn’t told Saitama yet about her powers, so it’s not like he’d know, and if they were going to be working together, it would inevitably come up anyway. “Well, it’s about my power. I can…well. I can control insects in a wide radius around myself. As a matter of fact, I have a swarm going right now, but I’m having them stick to the alleys so I don’t attract attention.”  
  
“That’s a pretty weird power, and kind of creepy, no offense,” Saitama said, unsettled. “Are you some kind of psychic or something?”  
  
Taylor nodded shortly. Not really the ideal reaction she’d hoped for, but she hadn’t really expected much. Her power really was kind of creepy, anyway. Saitama hadn’t reacted in utter disgust, so that was something.  
  
“I guess so? I don’t think I’m a psychic like you’re thinking of, though,” she said. “I didn’t get to choose my powers. Nobody does. You trigger and then you’re stuck with what you’ve got.”  
  
“Huh,” Saitama said thoughtfully. “That makes sense. The psychics back at home never did anything interesting with their powers, just flying around and throwing rubble and rocks at each other. Uncreative, if you ask me. Does everybody with powers undergo ‘triggers’ to get these powers like yours?”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Taylor said. She glanced up, checking her surroundings. They were getting close to where she almost died at Lung’s hands after she mistook his aborted supervillain gang-war for planning child homicide. “As far as I know, every single cape triggered in order to get their powers.”  
  
“What’s triggering like?” Saitama said curiously.  
  
“It’s…different from person to person,” she said uncomfortably. “Depends on the powers that they end up getting, so I hear. It’s a touchy subject for capes. But, um. I know that I didn’t have a fun time when it happened to me.”  
  
Saitama nodded slowly. “So…when you triggered…something caused it to happen. It wasn’t an abrupt event.”  
  
“Yeah,” Taylor said roughly. She didn’t remember how exactly they go onto this subject, but the conversation was getting near to the question of what happened to her that caused her to trigger in the first place.  
  
“Something happened to you that caused you to trigger,” Saitama stated. He didn’t add anything to it, and left the unspoken question hanging. Taylor wasn’t in the mood to hash out her life at the moment, so she let it pass by.  
  
“…yeah,” Taylor said quietly, her hand at her side clenching. She changed the subject. “We’re here. I fought Lung here a few nights ago. It was a chance event, running into him. I ended up accidentally averting a gang war. Let’s see if any of his gang members are lurking around.”  
  
Saitama nodded, accepting the diversion. “How likely are we to run into them? How will I be able to tell what I’m looking for?”  
  
“Oh, right. The ABB’s gang colors are red and green. They always wear it very obviously. If we spot them, we can go from there.”  
  
They walked around, and didn’t find anybody, but Taylor expected that. They fell into a rhythm of walking from block to block, and it was nearly a half an hour before Saitama spotted anything.  
  
“Down the street,” he said, pointing. Taylor looked where he pointed, but she didn’t see anything. Still though, it was something.  
  
“Right, let’s see what they’re up to,” she said. With that, they moved into the alleys and jogged toward where he had pointed. Once there, they climbed up the fire escape of a building and took a look at the hoodlums from the darkened rooftop. It was definitely ABB all right. How good was Saitama’s vision? These guys had been ten blocks away, standing in the dark in front of an apartment building. Taylor shook her head. Incredible. He was full of surprises. Now, what were these guys up to?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! This has been really fun so far and your support means a lot.


	11. The Girl Who Kicked A Hornet's Nest

At first glance, the ABB thugs weren’t doing much of anything other than smoking and talking quietly in mandarin as they leaned against the building’s streetfacing wall. It was obvious that they were guarding something, but what?  
  
“I’m going to take a closer look with my bugs,” Taylor informed Saitama. He nodded, and she moved her swarm into the out-of-sight nooks and crannies in the tenement hall that the ABB were standing out in front of. It took a few minutes, but it was an older building, so there was plenty of entry points.  
  
As the bugs made their way inside, she felt a picture of the interior coming together. Nine, ten families it seemed like, judging from the groupings of the people. The tenement was five stories tall, two apartments per floor. Oddly enough, there was lots of movement inside from everyone that she tracked by unobtrusively placing a bug on each person she found. Fifty-three people total in the building, and they were all awake at this time of night. Were these families, or were they all gang members? Taylor wasn’t familiar enough with the gang's organizational structure to be sure, but something felt off about this. Did she just stumble on an ABB safehouse where they forced asian nonmembers to work for their illicit activity? But then, if Lung was in custody, why were the ABB were carrying on with business as usual? Oni Lee was the only other parahuman of the group that she knew about, but who knew? She had her bugs investigate further. She could feel through her bugs that there were lots of equipment in each apartment. Lots of tools, but each apartment seemed to have different sets. She didn’t know enough to identify what those tools she felt were.  
  
As an afterthought, she also tagged the two guards on the street, having a small handful of bugs crawl all over them in ways they couldn’t feel or see at a casual glance. She felt metal textures on each of them, located in their waistbands. Big and heavy. Those were likely guns. She checked each of the people inside, armed with this new information. A small handful of the people inside were armed, two to each individual apartment, except for one located on the third floor. There was one person who was wearing clothes unlike the rest of everyone, in or out of the building. Armor of some sort, and lots of wires on what felt like she shoulders. The person was also wearing some kind of mask, the shape of the outline traced from her bugs made Taylor think ‘gasmask’. Almost certainly not Oni Lee, but Taylor couldn’t recall any parahuman (and Taylor was very certain that this was a parahuman) who fit the general description that she put together. She was also getting sound through her connection with the swarm, but she usually just tuned it out. Maybe if she gave it another try? Taylor focused on the sound information that she was receiving.  
  
It was very indistinct, mostly just noise. Taylor didn’t know if she’d ever get the hang of listening through her swarm. She couldn’t pick up words, but she was picking up tones of voices. The other nine apartments that the parahuman didn’t occupy were quieter, although the occupants moved around just as much as the tenth. The tenth apartment, Taylor could make out a distinct voice, with the occasional answering voice as if they were answering in reply. She guessed that it was the leader talking. Quite the chatterbox, compared to everyone else. The parahuman leader moved from where they were standing and walked across the hall to the other apartment on the same floor. The parahuman spoke briefly, before moving on and dipping into other apartments in a circuitous route. Checking up on operations, no doubt.  
  
“So what’s going on in there?” Saitama asked lazily, jerking her out of her thoughts.  
  
“Well,” Taylor said, recollecting herself. “It looks like this place is a base of operations or something. Ten people who I’m pretty sure are ABB members watching over a bunch of people throughout the building, who are doing god-knows-what. There’s somebody else who feels like they’re in charge from the way that they’re behaving. Probably a parahuman, because I could feel them wearing a costume and all this equipment that nobody else is equipped with. I thought Oni Lee was the only other parahuman in the gang besides Lung, but apparently that’s not the case. I have no idea who it could be, though, since it’s clearly not Oni Lee, based off of what I know about him.”  
  
“You got all that from your bugs?” Saitama asked uneasily. Seemed like he was a little queasy about bugs, even if he didn’t come out and say anything. “I guess that’s useful. So what do you want to do about them?”  
  
“I’m not sure,” Taylor said, uncertain. “There’s a lot that I can’t see about what’s happening inside. It’s clear that whatever's going on isn’t good, but I can’t get anything that I can act upon. I want to do something, though. Hmmm.”  
  
“I can just walk right up to them,” Saitama proposed abruptly.  
  
“But…!” Taylor objected, flabbergasted. “We don’t know what the parahuman inside is capable of! There’s a lot of other reasons that this is a bad idea.”  
  
“Then why not call up for backup from your version of the Hero’s Association?” Saitama said.  
  
“I dunno. If we call them, I’m not even sure that they would act on what we would tell them, other than probably tell us to back off,” Taylor said. “I don’t want to let this go when it’s happening right in front of me, you know?”  
  
She sighed.  
  
“Alright, this is probably a bad idea, but if you feel confident about it, let’s go with your idea. I’ll hang back and be ready to call the Protectorate if this goes sideways, though. I’ll also have my bugs ready to attack the moment things aren’t going your way so that you can get a chance to get away,” Taylor conceded.  
  
Saitama nodded, and suddenly stepped off of the roof, landing on the sidewalk below. He was about fifty feet away from the two guards posted at the front, and they definitely noticed him.  
  
Immediately, they tensed up, their hands slipping into their clothes, grabbing weapons without pulling them out. They didn’t say anything yet. It didn’t look like they spotted Taylor huddled on the roof that Saitama came from.  
  
He looked over at the gangsters and then started walking towards them, sedately as you please. Taylor experienced a moment of panic, afraid for Saitama’s life. What the hell was he doing?! This wasn’t what she had in mind! She took a breath to steady herself. Saitama didn’t look scared in the least, and he was a professional, so he said. It took some effort, but she trusted that he wasn’t going to get killed in a suicidal action at the hands of dangerous people who would murder him without hesitation.  
  
Saitama made it twenty feet before the guns came out. Well, that was one speculation put to rest. Those were definitely guns Taylor had felt with her bugs. One of the thugs shouted an angry warning, which Saitama didn’t appear to pay any mind at all. thirty feet, forty. The guns were pointed at him now. The thug who originally shouted, called out another warning, more dire than the last. He didn’t slow his casual pace. Taylor was a second away from siccing the bugs on the two men. And then everything happened at once.  
  
The one of the gangsters fired his gun and Saitama suddenly wasn’t where he was, having stepped to the side, his cape billowing briefly from the sudden movement. An instant later, he moved in on the two thugs in a burst of speed. Another instant later, the goons found themselves in Saitama’s midst, who gripped both guns in their hands. They wrestled their hands away after futilely trying to yank the guns out of Saitama’s hands. He dropped both weapons onto the street with a distant set of heavy clinks as they hit the pavement. Taylor looked closer. The muzzles of both guns were warped in the shape of the hands that Saitama used to grab them, deformed like clay.  
  
Saitama put his hands on his hips and said something that Taylor couldn’t make out. One of the flunkies lunged at him and was knocked back on his ass with ease. Taylor would have been sure that Saitama hadn’t moved but for a brief ripple of his cape. Holy shit, **he was fast.** The other flunky yanked out a huge knife and wildly swung it overhead at Saitama, who proceeded to pluck it out of the flunky’s hand and tossed it over his shoulder. Saitama put his hands back on his hips and appeared to try talking again.  
  
The flunky on the ground looked woozy and was struggling to get back up; the freshly-disarmed flunky goggled at Saitama in awe and fear. Saitama gestured at the tenement building they were just guarding, still talking, and the flunky flinched like Saitama was going to hit him.  
  
After a few long seconds though, the able-bodied flunky started talking back.  
  
Inside, several people had reacted to the gunshot, one of which was the probable leader of this operation, the parahuman. The parahuman grabbed a nearby armed person, jerking them around and talking to them in an irritated tone of voice. The person left, and ran downstairs. Apparently they couldn’t see out of the windows of the tenement. They had only seconds before the guy spotted Saitama and the guards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smaller chapter today, happy belated valentine's day! Last few days were a little hectic, so I thought I'd put out what I managed to get down so far, because you're all patient and I deeply appreciate that. I also made headway in setting up a nice surprise for you guys in a few chapters, can't wait to unveil it! In the meantime, the next chapter will be beefier and more timely, pinky promise. As always, thank you all for your support!


	12. An Egg and A Spider Make Their Debut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I am a little late in posting this update, but as promised, it's nice and beefy. I have my fingers crossed that I can get another big update or two by the time the week is out. The special surprise is still coming up.

At this distance, there was no way for Taylor to quickly signal Saitama without giving herself or her position away.  
  
_There has to be a way,_ she thought, mind racing. She could feel the bugs on the person the leader sent hurrying down. He was on the third floor and moving fast. She lit upon a wild idea, and hastily pulled insects from her reserves spaced out on the nearby buildings, including the ABB building and hers. She had her fliers carry her wingless crawlers, to boost the numbers she had available for what she wanted to accomplish, and sent them to the side of the ABB building that faced the street where Saitama would be able to see it.  
  
“Look, I don’t see what’s so life-and-death about you not telling me what’s going on here?” Saitama asked reasonably. The two thugs who had been disarmed were cowed, and had refused to say anything. They said that they would die if they told him anything, which put Saitama in a pickle. He shrugged, and knocked the thugs unconscious with ease. Nothing vicious, just grabbing them by the neck for a few seconds until they passed out.  
  
Saitama was wondering what the step would be when a mass of writhing insects appeared on the wall in front of him. Was that Taylor? He pulled a face as he watched the insects move with eerie coordination, forming what appeared to be words. That was certainly a way to use bug control. Nice girl, but such a creepy power.  
  
_**1 GOON COMING DOWN STAIRS EVRYONE INSIDE KNOWS UR HERE ENGAGING W BUGS NOW LEADER IS ON 5TH FLR**_  
  
Saitama turned and nodded in Taylor’s direction where she hid on the roof in acknowledgment before turning back and letting himself into the building. As he stepped over the threshold, he was greeted by screaming and noises of struggle. It sounded like the whole building was under attack. There were faint sounds of buzzing and droning accompanying the screams. Definitely Taylor doing that.  
  
He crossed the tiny lobby and started walking up the steps. On the next floor, he found a man trashing on the floor futilely trying to get the bugs crawling on him and biting him off. Saitama put him out of his misery by gently squeezing his neck until he passed out. The bugs crawled off of him and swarmed away up the stairs. Saitama still didn’t know what to think about Taylor’s power, and wondered what he’d tell her next time he saw her. It wasn’t exactly actionable advice to tell someone ‘be less creepy’ when your power is literally bug control.  
  
_Eh,_ he mentally shrugged, and resumed walking up the steps up to the fifth floor. _As long as she keeps them away from me, we’re cool._  
  
Saitama encountered nobody else on his way up, although it was kind of uncomfortable to be walking up to noises not unlike a haunted house attraction that he went through when he was younger. It was in middle school, and the whole school put on a fair. One of the classes had decided to turn their room into a haunted graveyard. Weird to suddenly remember, years and worlds later.  
  
He reached the fifth floor without further incident, and walked down the hallway. There were two doors, with a group of bugs arranged as a giant X on one of them. He supposed Taylor marked where the leader was hiding. Whatever. He stopped in front of it and tried the doorknob. Locked.  
  
“Hello?” he called. No answer from the sounds of panicked yells and movement. He shrugged, trying the door again. He twisted a little too hard, shattering the doorknob.  
  
“Oops, shit,” Saitama muttered. He gently pushed open the door, which cracked and warped in a shriek of breaking wood before the frame of the door snapped and the door swung inward on its hinges.  
  
All at once, a grenade bounced onto the ground at his feet and exploded in his face, blowing apart the door, frame, and surrounding floor entirely. He dusted himself off and walked through into the room beyond with a sigh.  
  
“That was terribly rude, whoever you are,” he greeted the people inside. He saw the person who Taylor claimed was the ringleader of this gang, a woman in a gasmask and decked out with armor and several bandoleers. The woman seemed busy with all the bugs that were on her crawling in her hair, buzzing loudly and possibly stinging and biting her. He was unsure of what to do at this point.  
  
“You! Who are you?!” screamed the woman, swatting at the bugs with one hand and rummaging in a bag slung on her shoulder. “Are you responsible for these bugs?!”  
  
“Nah, bugs are creepy. I’m just a guy who’s a hero for fun,” he said. “Who are you supposed to be? You look like a post-apoc cosplay.”  
  
The woman appeared to find what she was looking for, pulling out an object that was about the size of a finger and snapped it in her hand, crowing triumphantly. Immediately, arcs of electricity lanced out from the destroyed object, weaving through all the bugs on her person before moving on to the bugs on her compatriots, building up momentum and leaping out of the room, all to the drawn out sounds of fizzling. The bugs all dropped dead, lifelessly bouncing onto the floor. Saitama wrinkled his nose in disgust at the amount of them. What a creepy power. The woman now addressed him.  
  
“Who am I? Who am I?! Have you been living under a rock? Are you stupid or something? I’m infamous! ‘Post-apoc cosplay’?! I’ll have you eat those words, you cretin. I am Bakuda, the new leader of the Azn Bad Boys,” Bakuda grandstanded. “And now, you’re at my mercy without those pesky bugs to distract me!”  
  
With those words, the armed members of her gang recovered enough to pull out their guns and point them squarely at Saitama. He could also hear guns cocking as other gang members rushed into the room and stopped, pointing their guns at Saitama as well. Everyone was spaced in just such a way as to prevent crossfire, the room was tense in anticipation of the imminent conflict.  
  
“Bakuda? Never heard of you. And what am I supposed to think when you look like a weirdo in a gasmask?” Saitama said disinterestedly, oblivious to the charged atmosphere.  
  
“Then die,” Bakuda snarled, signaling her thugs.  
  
Several weapons fired at once, the small room filled with the echoing cacophony of gunfire.

* * *

 

Taylor was freaking out after all her bugs in and around the tenement hall died abruptly from whatever the gang leader did. She was now blind and Saitama was now defenseless, in the clutches of the ABB at the heart of their stronghold. She had known this was a bad idea, but she had let Saitama talk her into it. She was just about to call the Protectorate and damn the consequences when a boom emanated from the building, which shook from the internal impact. A couple seconds later, there was a series of crashes and sounds of a building being torn apart from the inside, roving around accompanying the sounds of explosions before settling at (as best as Taylor could judge) the second floor. Then, silence descended. Taylor watched the building for further activity, clutching the edge of the roof where she squat, unsure of what to do.  
  
About a minute later, Saitama walked out! A little dirty and covered in dust, but he, miraculously, didn’t seem to be hurt. He was walking with a person slung over his shoulder. Taylor jumped up, and ran for the fire escape down to the street. She managed to get all the way down and intercepted Saitama in the middle of the street as he was walking back towards where he had left Taylor waiting.  
  
“Saitama!” Taylor cried from relief. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? It sounded really nasty from where I was watching and all my bugs died, so I couldn’t help you. Who is this?” She gestured at the unconscious person in costume slumped over Saitama’s shoulder.  
  
“Yeah, I’m fine. It wasn’t tough, but her bombs made it tricky to get to her,” Saitama said, as if discussing the weather. He pointed at the woman on his shoulder. “She said her name’s Baka. Bakura? Bakbomba? Bakuda. I think that’s what she said, at least. She claimed that she was the new leader of the gang or something.”  
  
Taylor looked at the unconscious woman again in surprise. Bakuda? What on earth was she doing here in Brockton Bay? It hadn’t been news that she was here in the city. Had Lung recruited her in secret? In any case, Taylor didn’t miss the fact that Bakuda was extremely dangerous. She had taken Cornell hostage with her tinker-made bombs a little while back. According to the news surrounding the event, she had been a student or prospective student there. And Saitama faced her head-on like it was nothing more than a minor nuisance. Granted, they had caught her in a moment of surprise. Tinkers were tricky like that. Face-to-face, they were nothing without their equipment or time to prepare for a confrontation, so it was on them to carefully choose their time and place to engage in fights. However, they made up for it in the power that their mad science inventions could pack and the sheer versatility of their equipment. Taylor had a feeling that this could have gone a lot worse if Bakuda had been fortunate to not run into Saitama when she was anything less than fully prepared and with a plan instead of being abruptly ambushed.  
  
“That’s good to know. We should take her to the Protectorate to be placed under arrest before she wakes up,” Taylor said. With that, she pulled her phone out again and dialed the number. It was answered on the third ring.  
  
“You have reached the number for the Brockton Bay Protectorate Headquarters. This is Mary speaking, how may I help you?”  
  
“You can,” Taylor said, with more confidence than she felt. “We just captured Bakuda. She was operating here in the city with the ABB in secret and we just busted her base of operations. We would like to turn her over to the authorities to be placed under arrest. Uh, please advise?” She finished uncertainly. It felt weird to act like she knew what she was doing, because this was the first time she was actually doing anything like being a hero who captured the villain.  
  
“Acknowledged. Please state your identity and location,” answered Mary, all business.  
  
Taylor paused, considering. This was now the time and place to give her cape name. First impressions mattered, and she couldn’t think of anything besides ‘Weaver’ that didn’t sound vaguely villainous. Fuck it, Weaver it was.  
  
“I’m Weaver, alongside of a hero who hasn’t picked his cape name, yet,” Taylor stated, keeping the option open to Saitama to pick his own codename. She certainly wasn’t going to decide for him. “And we’re at 47th street, in between Sailor and League streets.”  
  
“Acknowledged. There are reports coming in from emergency responders of calls about gunshots and explosions in that area. Are those reports connected with your arrest of Bakuda, Weaver?” Mary went on.  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” Taylor answered.  
  
“Acknowledged. Please stay at your stated location, a team is being dispatched as we speak and are going to be headed your way. Is there anything else I can help you with?” Mary asked.  
  
“No, ma’am. And thank you, we’ll wait for the team you’re sending,” Taylor said.  
  
“Thank you, Weaver. Goodnight,” Mary said as she hung up. Taylor looked at the phone in her hand, overcome by the surreality of the situation where she was a hero acting like a professional, making an actual arrest. She shook her head and stowed the phone back into her armor.  
  
“So what’s the plan?” Saitama asked curiously, interrupting her thoughts.  
  
“We wait for the Protectorate to come collect Bakuda. They should be arriving very soon,” Taylor answered, collecting herself. She turned back towards him. “Thank you for coming with me tonight, Saitama. It means a lot, and this would have gone a lot worse if you hadn’t been here. Hell, I don’t think I’d have even found this place without your help.”  
  
“Eh, it was no big deal. I had nothing else going on anyway,” Saitama said flippantly. “And give yourself some credit. You were doing well enough with those bugs before Baka pulled out that weird device that killed your swarm.”  
  
Taylor felt a surge of gratitude at the praise, even when she doubted that she could have won this fight without Saitama. She changed the subject.  
  
“By the way, the responder I talked to asked about our codenames. I decided to go with Weaver, because I can have my spiders weave together webs. That’s how I made my armor, anyway. Spider silk is really strong, able to be woven into material that can blunt the impact of bullets and knives,” She said, patting her side. “So while we have a few minutes, we should think up of a name for you that we can tell the Protectorate about. Any ideas?”  
  
“Whoa, you really can pick your own name,” Saitama asked interestedly, as if that was a novel concept. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his free hand, considering.  
  
“Hmm. To tell you the truth, I never gave my name any thought before. Never saw the point before, but if people are so hung up on it and they’re letting me pick what to call myself… Hmm. This is tougher than I thought, and pretty sudden, too.”  
  
“That’s okay, Saitama. I was having trouble picking my name, too,” Taylor said reassuringly. She racked her brain for a name that would fit him that somebody hadn’t already taken.  
  
“Bulwark? Rampart? Hyperion?” Taylor ventured, Saitama shaking his head a little at each suggestion. “Dome?”  
  
Saitama chuckled good-naturedly, shaking his head.  
  
“Vim? Guts? Nothing stands out?” Taylor asked.  
  
“Nah, not really. I appreciate your help, but nothing seems to fit,” Saitama mused.  
  
They lapsed into silence; by unspoken agreement, they settled in to wait.

* * *

 

Saitama and Taylor didn’t have to wait very long before the police, firefighters, and EMTs to arrive, followed by the team of heroes that the Protectorate dispatched.  
  
The emergency responders had sent an officer over to where Saitama and Taylor were standing where they were asked questions on the situation. Were there anybody still inside the building? How many? How extensive was the damage to the building? Were the people inside still armed? Anybody inside with powers? And so on and so forth before the officer formed a timeline of events and the outline of the current situation. Nodding with finality, he thanked them for their time and walked briskly back toward the main body of workers lit up by the flashing lights of the vehicles surrounding the tenement building, doubtlessly to brief them and help plan how they were going to safely clear out the building, sweeping for survivors and other logistical considerations. Saitama was always impressed by how professional officers and other emergency workers did their duties, even in situations that were outside the norm like monsters and supervillains.  
  
A pair of EMTs hustled over, escorted by a pair of officers, carrying a bag of equipment between the two of them. They had Saitama lay Bakuda down on the asphalt before they began doing basic diagnostics on both Saitama and Bakuda. After a couple of minutes, the EMT examining Saitama judged him to be completely unhurt before moving over to his partner to assist her in examining Bakuda.  
  
The officer stood directly by Bakuda to help them guard her as a prisoner, even if the gesture was more symbolic than practical. It was good to help keep appearances, Taylor mused. She was standing with her back ramrod straight and shoulders squared, hands holding each other behind her back. This was her first impression with the general non-powered populace, and she wasn’t going to give them the impression that she was anything less than a professional, even if she often felt out of her depth. Saitama stood by her side, glancing around disinterestedly.  
  
The heroes arrived not long after in a truck with the PRT logo emblazoned on the sides, lights silently flashing before shutting off as it rolled to a stop a few yards away.  
  
Miss Militia, Assault, Battery, and Velocity all stepped out of the truck.  
  
“Weaver and the unnamed partner, I presume?” Miss Militia called out as the heroes approached.  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” Taylor answered. Miss Militia definitely gave off an air that commanded that kind of respect, so ‘ma’am’ it was. Saitama glanced at the Miss Militia and nodded without saying anything.  
  
“A pleasure to meet you both,” Miss Militia said warmly and stuck out a hand when she got within arms-length. She shook both Taylor’s and Saitama’s hands. Inwardly, Taylor was jumping up and down in excitement. She just shook hands with another real-life hero! This week was shaping up to be quite the trip after she had already met Armsmaster a few days ago. Miss Militia went on. “I’m Miss Militia, and these are my teammates.” She indicated them as she spoke their names.  
  
“Velocity…” Velocity nodded in greeting.  
  
“Assault…” A genial wave and a big friendly smile from Assault.  
  
“And Battery.” Another wave and smile, if more sedate and restrained than Assault’s.  
  
Assault and Battery went to relieve the officers of their guard-duty over Bakuda. The officers walked with Velocity back towards the tenement; apparently the cape was going to aid the non-powered responders in clearing out the building in some way.  
  
That left Miss Militia standing in front of them, with the capes guarding Bakuda standing in earshot.  
  
“We got the general picture of what happened here with the information you gave to the police, but if you like, I have some questions for you to help us clarify things,” Miss Militia began.  
  
Taylor and Saitama both nodded, and Miss Militia continued.  
  
“How did you both come to be here?”  
  
“Well,” Taylor spoke, taking up the role of being the spokeswoman here. “My partner and I were out patrolling tonight, looking for signs of ABB activity after Lung’s arrest. We spotted a pair of men out front there,” she pointed at the tenement building. “They were wearing ABB gang colors, so we decided to check it out. My power is being able to control bugs, so I used them to discreetly scout out the building. From my initial findings, I determined that there was gang activity in full swing inside, so, well, we decided to confront them. My partner went in and subdued the leader, who we later learned was Bakuda, while I covered him with my bugs, ordering them to attack her gang. Then we decided to call you guys.”  
  
“That was quite risky, though you were successful. Is this your first night out?” Miss Militia asked, with an assessing look in her eyes.  
  
“For me, it’s technically my second. This is my partner’s first patrol, yes,” Taylor replied meekly.  
  
“That’s quite the accomplishment. Good job,” Miss Militia said sincerely.  
  
Did Taylor and Saitama just impress Miss Militia? Taylor felt her chest swell in pride. First Lung, then this!  
  
“Thank you, Miss Militia,” Taylor said, the pride she was feeling seeping only a little into her voice.  
  
Miss Militia acknowledged the thanks with a nod and a smile in her eyes before turning to look at Saitama directly and spoke again.  
  
“Whoever you are, thank you for your part in apprehending a highly dangerous criminal. Tinkers are notoriously difficult to deal with, let alone tinkers who specialize in creating bombs.”  
  
“No problem,” Saitama finally replied, absently. “That would explain why she seemed like kind of a one-trick pony, throwing all those explosives around. She could’ve hurt someone with those if she wasn’t careful.”  
  
Miss Militia nodded gravely.  
  
“Correct. She’s on record for previously using her tinker-made bombs to hold a university hostage. In fact, she did hurt quite a lot of people, even if nobody died, thank god. You both did a lot of public good, helping us bring her in.”  
  
She paused, and then continued.  
  
“Now, for the matter of you two. I personally think that you both would be fine additions to the PRT, if you would like to join us. You both look like you want to fight the good fight, and that’s something that’s rewarded in our group. You will have access to resources that few heroic groups will have access to, plus the assurance that fellow capes will have your back in your efforts to be a hero. There are some things that you may have to give up, like the ability to charge in like you both did tonight, but many, including me, think it’s a good trade for the benefits gained. Oni Lee is still unaccounted for, so I doubt the ABB will fall apart from this. News will reach them about happened, and who was responsible, once we break the news of the arrests tonight. Whoever you are, you can join the Protectorate. Weaver, there’s a place for you in the Wards. What do you say?”  
  
There was another pause as Taylor and Saitama both considered. Taylor spoke first.  
  
“I’m honored at the offer, Miss Militia, but I think I’ll keep being an independent cape, at least for now,” Taylor said.  
  
Saitama seemed to come to a decision, because he spoke immediately after Taylor finished her piece.  
  
“I’ve been a part of organizations like yours before, so I know what it’s like. I usually don’t work very well as part of a team, no offense. So, maybe. I’ll think about,” Saitama said.  
  
Miss Militia nodded respectfully.  
  
“Understood. Consider my offer an open one, you both can join any time you like if you keep on with the heroic activity like you just displayed tonight. I had best be going, booking Bakuda will take some time. Thank you again for your efforts, we owe you for it. I hope I’ll be seeing you around again in the future, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you need assistance. Goodnight,” Miss Militia said, tipping her hat respectfully and walking over to where the EMTs appeared to be finishing up examining the still-unconscious Bakuda and set to work restraining her and relieving her of her equipment, with both Battery and Assault’s assistance.  
  
That was their cue that Saitama and Taylor were dismissed, so they simply walked away, Taylor waving before they fell out of sight of the flashing lights and bustle of activity. Taylor didn’t envy them, there was a lot of work ahead of them, processing all those people in the building, especially if it was structurally unsound like it sounded like when Saitama fought Bakuda. When they were a good bit of distance away, she broke the silence.  
  
“Thank you, for everything, Saitama. You were being a little reckless directly confronting a building full of thugs like that and a cape that could have blown you up, but I’m glad you were here to help me. And…well, I also wanted to thank you for helping me in another way, yesterday. Not only for coming along and backing me up, but I think you helped me make a good choice in dealing with the Undersiders, even if you didn’t directly help me in making my own decisions. It was all pretty messy and I still don’t know how it’ll turn out, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’ve got this, you know? Like I actually have some control over my life, for once. I owe you, and I’d like to repay you somehow, even if I don’t really know how, right this moment.”  
  
She self-consciously ran a hand through her hair. Saitama looked over and smiled a little.  
  
“Hey, don’t worry about. I see that you’re trying to figure yourself out. You’re sticking to your own weird path, even if you don’t quite know what it is, yet. I was a lot like you, once. I took up my hobby and was calling myself a hero long before I figured out that other people who call themselves heroes existed. Not a lot of people realize that you’re free to just make your own choices,” he said, before a thought occurred to him. “Wait, don’t you have school tomorrow?”  
  
“Ah, heh,” Taylor said, caught off-guard. “Yeah, I do. I’ll live without a little sleep.”  
  
“You shouldn’t skimp sleep just because you’re serious about your hobby, or you’ll burn out. A full night’s rest is vital to a hero,” Saitama admonished seriously.  
  
“Alright, yeah,” Taylor accepted, slightly annoyed even though she knew that Saitama meant it in a caring way, and would have been right if she was the type of person where school mattered anymore. Saitama didn’t know that she hardly cared about her performance in school anymore, and as such, didn’t place a lot of value on getting enough rest to make the most of her schooldays. She wondered idly if she’d tell him about how little she thought school mattered when it was hell and it didn’t matter as long as she got by with a minimum of bullying. She quashed the impulse. Nobody could help her there, and it would only be a little bit more time that she would have to endure it before she took the early legal exit of getting her GED in a couple months. She didn’t want Saitama to worry necessarily about that aspect of her life.  
  
“Anyway,” she continued before Saitama could get another word in. “I better go. It’s pretty late as it is, and I guess you’re pretty tired, too. If you like, we can do this again sometime, when it’s not a schoolnight. Keep the mask.”  
  
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Saitama nodded affirmatively. “Have a good night, Taylor.”  
  
“You too, Saitama,” Taylor said, smiling under mask. She turned in a different direction, towards her house, and waved goodbye before breaking into a light jog in order to make good time so that she wouldn’t be too exhausted from lack of sleep in the morning for her daily run. She would stop somewhere on the way in order to get out of her costume. Hopefully this time, she wouldn’t wake up her dad like she did a few nights ago and get the bell installed on the house’s door like he had threatened to do if she went out at night without telling him again. She was a little nervous at the possibility of getting caught, but she would cross that bridge if she came to it. She wondered again if maybe she should just come clean about being a cape…hmm. Maybe. She compartmentalized, but she realized that she couldn’t keep it from him forever, as it was only a matter of time before little things added up and he might jump to the wrong conclusions and made things messier out of a misguided attempt to help her, or something. She didn’t want that to complicate things between her and her dad, even though she was worried that he would be too strict out of worry if and when he found out that she was going out as a masked vigilante. She also had the fact that she helped bring down two supervillains, now. Decisions, decisions; between two less-than-ideal choices. She’ll think about it later, assuming she didn’t get caught again tonight.  
  
Later, as she arrived back at her house, she took special care to be quiet in letting herself inside and slipping into her room, into her bed. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. Four hours of sleep, if she was lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	13. The Hivemind Has Some Questions

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**♦ Topic: Bakuda Arrested Last Night, Revealed to be Secret New ABB Leader After Lung’s Arrest!  
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CapeLover56  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 10:43 AM   
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**Old Timer**  
  
**Joined:** Feb 11, 2007  
**Location:** Maine  
**Posts:** 3,408  |  The link to the breaking news is [here](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D).  
  
This happened sometime after midnight, a friend who happened to live nearby the ABB base that got busted told me that there were a LOT of vehicles at the site, coming and going.  
  
Lots of police, lots of firefighters, lots of ambulances, a full bomb squad all coordinating to clear out the building after they cuffed Bakuda and took her away. Velocity was even spotted, providing assistance.  
  
Apparently, the apartment complex that served as her and the gang’s base of operations became “structurally unsound” during the conflict between Bakuda and the capes that brought her down, with her gang still inside. Talk about collateral damage. But that’s not everything.  
  
In the article, it passingly mentions that the capes that fought her were heroes. Non-PRT-affiliated heroes. And it seems like they decided to announce themselves with their little raid operation.  
  
One of the capes calls themselves Weaver. The friend I mentioned earlier was able to get close enough to get a look at the capes at the scene and they had spotted Miss Militia, Assault, and Battery. They also saw the two capes, though he hadn’t known who until the article came out an hour ago. He thinks that Weaver is the one wearing dark armor with the back of her mask open to let her hair spill out. He says that Weaver looked like a woman, at least, with that kind of hair. To the best of my knowledge, that’s about as much anyone knows about Weaver. Very mysterious. We don’t even know what her powers are.  
  
The other cape Weaver was partnered up with, we know even less about. They apparently declined to give anybody his cape name because he still hadn’t picked one yet. Or something. Who already has a costume ready to go and no name? Probably some kind of impatient amateur, if he wanted to start fighting crime and didn’t even have a name ready to tell the authorities, but then, who knows? My friend could only see that he wore some kind of white cape and that it was too dark to see much else. No word on what his powers are supposed to be, either.  
  
Very perplexing, to say the least.  
  
That aside, it’s pretty disturbing to hear that the ABB hadn’t broken up like everybody hoped, but instead had an insane bomb tinker take the helm after vanishing from Boston several months ago. Does the ABB have any other capes in their ranks that we don’t know about? Is Oni Lee going to be the new leader? If not, then who? Will this be what finally brings them down?  


* * *

What is the sound of one superhuman hand clapping?  
  
Major Theory Threads:  
[Where do cape powers come from?](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D) | [What does Sleeper do that has everyone so scared?](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D)  
  
(Showing page 4 of 6)

Saloony Atroughy  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 12:11 PM   
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**Newbie**  
  
**Joined:** Mar 7, 2010  
**Location:** Brockton Bay  
**Posts:** 176  |  It’s really nice to have some new capes in our corner!! I hope they last long enough to make a difference in our city, but this place has a tendency to chew up all of our heroes, and they’re always so out-numbered…  


* * *

"It’s high noon!"   
Citizen_Pain  |  **Posted:** Apr 12, 2011 12:32 PM   
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**Journeyman**  
  
**Joined:** Mar 7, 2009  
**Location:** MIT  
**Posts:** 1,023  | 

solarcub wrote:

i spotted a guy in a white cape yesterday in broad daylight. he looked more like a cosplayer than some1 who can take down supervillains. he was also wearing a yellow jumpsuit and red gloves n boots. couldnt tell you what he looked like though. he wasnt wearing a mask but i hadnt thought much of him at the time n didnt get a good look at him. could that be the same guy??? 

It may very well be. That’s way too much of a coincidence to be just have been a rando that vaguely fits the description of Weaver’s teammate. Shame you hadn’t paid attention to get a good look at him.  
  
But if it indeed was the same guy, then why was he wearing a mask when he busts Bakuda?  


* * *

It was his nerve.   
4angleRed  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 12:11 PM   
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**Newbie**  
  
**Joined:** Mar 21, 2011  
**Location:** Pennsyltucky  
**Posts:** 67  |  Any idea what their gonna be calling their new team? The news article didnt say.  


* * *

[Image link broken]   
GrunningsDagoba  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 12:32 PM   
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**Confirmed PRT Agent**  
  
**Joined:** Mar 7, 2006  
**Location:** Brockton Bay  
**Posts:** 202  | 

4angleRed wrote:

Any idea what their gonna be calling their new team? The news article didnt say. 

We’re as much in the dark as you are. I can’t say much, but what I can tell you is that these two new capes haven’t publicly done anything before. Our first impression is that they’re a couple of newbies still figuring themselves out, but they want to do good. We all wish them the best. Goodness knows that they’re gonna need well-wishes if they want to continue squaring off against the entrenched criminal elements around here.  
  
  
zombiejane  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 12:50 PM   
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**Proficient**  
  
**Joined:** Dec 23, 2009  
**Location:** Northwest USA  
**Posts:** 507  |  I’m honestly surprised at how  little there was in collateral damage, other than a condemned apartment building and dozens of relatively light injuries. Nobody died.  
  
There could easily have been casualties and a lot more property damage when you’re dealing with a bomb tinker, and I don’t care how much they apparently caught her by surprise. That was very reckless of them to charge in, if they knew who they were going up against.  
  
Another point: not everybody who got taken into custody in wake of the conflict was a sworn ABB member. Vast majority are civilians, but they haven’t been released yet, even accounting for a lot of them having to be kept in medical observation for their injuries from being in proximity to Bakuda vs Brockton’s Newest Heroic Duo (I can’t help they haven’t named themselves yet. Shut up in advance.) and the PRT is reportedly being tight-lipped about it.  


* * *

"Jane, you are the demons."  
And then Jane was a zombie.   
Citizen_Pain  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 12:54 PM   
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**Journeyman**  
  
**Joined:** Mar 7, 2009  
**Location:** MIT  
**Posts:** 1,023  | 

zombiejane wrote:

Another point: not everybody who got taken into custody in wake of the conflict was a sworn ABB member. Vast majority are civilians, but they haven’t been released yet, even accounting for a lot of them having to be kept in medical observation for their injuries from being in proximity to Bakuda vs Brockton’s Newest Heroic Duo (I can’t help they haven’t named themselves yet. Shut up in advance.) and the PRT is reportedly being tight-lipped about it. 

Can you comment on this, [@GrunningsDagoba](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D)?  


* * *

It was his nerve.   
AngusSwordsmith  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 1:05 PM   
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**Proficient**  
  
**Joined:** Jan 4, 2010  
**Location:** The Forge  
**Posts:** 348  |  Well, whoever they are, I hope we get to get a good picture of them before too long. They so far haven’t given an interview. No sign on them browsing our humble forum, either. What are they like? I’m dying from curiosity to know more about the secretive team that consists of Weaver and He-Who-Is-Yet-To-Be-Named in the white cape.  


* * *

While you were busy editing the wiki, I studied the blade.   
CronedaleUSA1990  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 1:17 PM   
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**Journeyman**  
  
**Joined:** Jun 26, 2008  
**Location:** Brockton Bay  
**Posts:** 950  |  I hope they hit the E88 next. They hurt some people close to me and I wouldn’t mind seeing those racist fuckheads getting taken down several pegs.  
  
Saloony Atroughy  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 1:20 PM   
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**Newbie**  
  
**Joined:** Mar 7, 2010  
**Location:** Brockton Bay  
**Posts:** 176  | 

CronedaleUSA1990 wrote:

I hope they hit the E88 next. They hurt some people close to me and I wouldn’t mind seeing those racist fuckheads getting taken down several pegs. 

Hear, hear!!  


* * *

"It’s high noon!"   
XxVoid_CowboyxX  |  **Posted:** Apr 13, 2011 1:47 PM   
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**Journeyman**  
  
**Joined:** Dec 25, 2009  
**Location:** Brockton Bay  
**Posts:** 1,341  | 

solarcub wrote:

i spotted a guy in a white cape yesterday in broad daylight. he looked more like a cosplayer than some1 who can take down supervillains. he was also wearing a yellow jumpsuit and red gloves n boots. couldnt tell you what he looked like though. he wasnt wearing a mask but i hadnt thought much of him at the time n didnt get a good look at him. could that be the same guy??? 

Where did you see him?? Are you telling me that everybody in Brockton Bay had a real-life cape (without his mask on!) running around under our noses and nobody got a good look at him???  


* * *

ROW, ROW, FIGHT THE POWA!!!!   
  
End of Page. ([1](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D), [2](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D), [3](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D), **[4](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D)** , [5](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D), [6](%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE!! This is the little side-project that I was working on. If you like this, I can do it again. 
> 
> Another update will come up, either later today or tomorrow.
> 
> As always, thank you all so much for reading.


	14. Taylor Mulls Her Options

The next day passed relatively uneventfully. She was feeling a little sleep-deprived, not she’d ever admit to Saitama that she was pushing herself too hard. Emma, Sophia, and Madison had all approached her together earlier in the day between first and second periods, and “accidentally” bumped into her, causing her to drop the textbook that she was carrying. Sophia kicked the book across the floor, and everyone laughed at her when she froze up and stood there without doing or saying anything before walking away to their second period classes. Taylor was thankful that was all they did, as she had been able to walk over to where the textbook came to rest in a small puddle of water underneath a water fountain. It could easily have been a lot worse.  
  
A few periods later, Taylor was in her Computer class with Mrs. Knott. Mrs. Knott was an alright teacher, if not the most hands-on, which suited Taylor just fine. It let her blow through the basic coursework and even work ahead, while Mrs. Knott concentrated on the troublemakers and the people who loudly distracted others in the class. This gave Taylor suitable breathing room to check in on PHO, one of her few pleasures that she was free to do in-school. On most other days, her browsing was idle. Today, like the last few days, was a lot more focused. She wanted to know how people were reacting to her busts of both Lung and Bakuda and if there was any public fallout over the ABB’s continued activity. At the rate she was going, she needed more information on the E88, not that she was in a hurry to confront them, but it seemed like the logical next step in her continued activities as a cape.  
  
There was a lot of information to go through. E88, in contrast to the ABB, had a lot of capes at their beck and call. Twelve capes, including Kaiser who led them all. That wasn’t including the hundreds of non-cape members who did the grunt work of exerting pressure on their claimed territory. To further complicate everything, there was speculation on when they were going to move again. Last night’s arrest of Bakuda was a huge blow to the ABB, and Oni Lee was, for all intents and purposes, alone. Taylor’s stomach twisted at the thought that in doing good, she and Saitama just more-or-less handed Brockton Bay to the E88 on a silver platter. The Merchants, too, to a lesser extent. She unwittingly created a power vacuum and any gang was all too willing to step in to fill.  
  
Taylor felt her hands clench over the keyboard as she stared at all the information. This wasn’t what she wanted, arresting criminals only to have things go back to other criminals stepping in to take their place, leaving the PRT to pick up the pieces and hold things together in a delicate equilibrium. Even before she had gotten her powers, she was tired of all the criminals in Brockton Bay doing more-or-less as they pleased so long as they didn’t do anything too disruptive. They were tolerated, so long as they didn’t go too far. As long as this continued, nothing would change. Her dad didn’t say much, but she got the idea that he felt like the criminals kept the heroes and the government in general too busy to stop Brockton Bay’s backslide of its local economy which fed into the criminal element with people with nothing else to do and nowhere else to turn.  
  
This had to change, but she was at a loss as to how to go about any of it.  
  
She had kind of a crappy power, but she had ideas as to how to make it useful in unexpected ways that would catch anyone off-guard, but it was still not enough. Saitama was powerful, but even Alexandria would be hard-pressed to take on everyone else at once alone before she got unlucky. He gave off an air of nonchalance, but Taylor had yet to see him back down from confronting criminals. Last night had been a wake-up call to his potential. Perhaps if they started doing precision strikes at criminal elements, they could work up to rooting out Brockton Bay and give everyone enough breathing room to start actually fixing things in the city…? She would have to speak with Saitama about plans going forward, what they could do. Perhaps Lisa could be persuaded to help, even if a little; she hadn’t seemed like someone who would just be a criminal for fun, even if she seemed to get a certain thrill in outwitting everyone.  
  
She glanced at the clock and saw that the end-of-period bell was about to ring, so she closed all of her tabs and logged off of the computer before packing away her textbook and notebook into her backpack.  
  
The bell rang and she stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder and walking out the door, taking care to avoid people who were allied with the trio of bullies and slipping out the door. Her eyes were alert as they assessed places and people to avoid if she wanted to get the minimum of trouble today. She decided that her next stop would be to the counselor’s office, to look into taking that GED exam. She would need the next two months in its fullest if she wanted to pass and get her early exit out of this hellhole. She would have to be careful in not letting Emma know that she was trying to get away, lest she ratchet up her torment.  
  
Between the conundrum of what to do next with Brockton Bay’s criminal capes and ensuring her final legal escape from school, Taylor had a lot to think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small chapter, today. Laying down the groundwork for future events, as it were.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	15. A Normal Day is Abruptly Cut Short

The school day had just ended when the first distant sound of an explosion reached the building. Most of the students had been milling out the doors out into the parking lot where the school buses and cars that a lot of the students had driven were parked.  
  
In that moment, everyone, including Taylor, had stopped walking, unsure of what they just heard. The air was briefly filled with questions muttered and speculations as to what that sound was before it was cut off by another explosion, much closer this time. With it, came cries of alarm. Teachers sprang into action, shouting above the din of raised voices and attempting to herd the teenagers back inside where it would be safer. There was another sound of an explosion, this time even closer. It was the unspoken signal for all hell to break loose, people began running, ignoring the yells of teachers and faculty who just lost control of the situation.  
  
Taylor didn’t think twice. She was among the large number of people who ran away from the school building.  
  
People were running, crawling under cars in the parking lot to shield themselves. Others ran for the buses. Taylor was among the dozens who ran past all of that out to the street and then in various directions away. Home. Taylor had to get home. Then she would contact her dad and make sure he was okay, then figure out what to do next. Her costume was hidden in her basement, and she didn’t yet know what she was going to do after that, but she knew she had to do something.  
  
Taylor made it a block down the street when the loudest explosion yet cut through the air behind her. Behind her…  
  
She stumbled to a stop, and looked behind her, back where she had come. Her blood ran cold. A plume of dust and smoke was already rising above the buildings surrounding Winslow High. She could her people screaming and yelling at this distance.  
  
She turned and continued running away, at a dead sprint. There was nothing she could do back there. She hated the thought of leaving people back there injured and likely dying, but there was nothing else to do. Her own safety was a priority right now.  
  
She passed within a block of another rising plume of smoke, and her phone vibrated in her pocket. She ignored it and kept running.  
  
By the time she had ran ten blocks, people were out in the streets. Horns were frantically honking as cars were locked on the roads, trying to get past the chaotically surging crowds of people running in every direction. Taylor could hear the first noises of emergency sirens wailing in the distance. Sound was coming from everywhere. It felt like the entire city was reacting to attacks in every quarter.  
  
She was starting to get a little winded, but pushed herself even harder. She dodged cars and groups of people. Home. She had to get home.  
  
Her phone vibrated in her pocket again, and she decided to check it. She yanked it out of her pocket, still running.  
  
A missed call and a text, both from Lisa. Taylor slowed to a light jog as she fumbled with the phone’s keyboard, trying to compose a text to reassure Lisa that she was alright. Between her unfamiliarity with the system and her body shaking from exertion and adrenaline, she couldn’t hack it, and gave up and called Lisa back. Lisa answered on the first ring.  
  
“Taylor,” Lisa urgently spoke first. “Are you okay? How far from the school are you at this point?”  
  
“I’m…fine,” Taylor spoke between huffs of breath as she picked her speed back up. “I wasn’t…near the…school when…it exploded. I’m going home…and calling my dad. Need to…make sure he’s…okay. Are you…okay? Are the…Undersiders…okay?”  
  
“I’m fine. So is everyone,” Lisa said. Taylor felt a pang of relief. Her friend was unhurt, that was one less thing to worry about. “I’m glad to know that you didn’t get hurt, either.They bombed your school? Jesus christ. Everybody going to come down hard on the ABB for this, and there’s going to be nothing holding them back. It looks like this is their way of going down swinging with a shitload of bombs that Bakuda had managed to create before she was arrested. Avoid the library on your way home, even though it’s right by your direct path. I got a feeling that there’s another bomb there and I don’t want you to get caught in the explosion. Call me again when you’re home, there something I need to look into.”  
  
“Okay…” Taylor panted. “Bye.”  
  
She ended the call and was about to put it back in her pocket, but then she remembered. Saitama. She speed-dialed him using his saved information on the phone. It rang and rang, for what felt like eternity.  
  
“Come on…” Taylor growled anxiously.  
  
After the tenth ring, there was a click as the call went through.  
  
“Hey, what’s up?” Saitama said.  
  
“Uh,” Taylor huffed. All the stress from the last several minutes derailed on this tone of voice, so casual. “Saitama! Are you watching the news? Have you looked outside? A bunch of bombs just went off, including at my school!”  
  
“Whoa, really? That sucks. Are you okay?” Saitama replied, giving no indication of being bothered at her outburst. At the very least, he seemed sincere in wanting to know.   
  
Taylor took a deep breath, both to calm herself and to speed her recovery from running, before continuing.  
  
“I’m fine. I’m glad you seem to be, too,” she said. “There’s going to be police, national guard, heroes, and other emergency responders going out in order to manage this chaos. I wouldn’t be surprised if groups like the E88 and the Merchants mobilize and take advantage of the confusion. Lisa thinks that the ABB are behind all these bombs. Everyone is running around. People are scared, and it doesn’t even seem to be over yet. I’m heading home to grab my costume and see if I can help in any way. Are you going to go out in costume? I could use some backup.”  
  
“Sure,” Saitama said instantly, which caught Taylor a little off-guard again with how ready he seemed to be after being informed there was trouble. Zero to a hundred, just like that. “I’ll meet you at your house.”  
  
“Um, okay. Thanks,” Taylor said. “Wait, don’t go directly to my house. I want to keep my cape life and civilian life separate, and my dad doesn’t…well. He doesn’t know about me. Not yet, at least. The neighbors would ask questions. Wait nearby and I’ll call you when I’m ready to go?”  
  
“If you say so,” he said. “See you then.”  
  
She hung up and jammed the phone back into her pocket.  
  
At this point, she was starting to have difficulty running flat out, so she jogged at a reduced her speed to preserve her endurance. If she kept running flat-out, she was going to collapse before she made it home. She struggled to get herself recentered, both from the school’s bombing and the information that Lisa just filled her in on. The ABB is responsible for this? But why? What was their plan if two of their three cape members were already in custody? What was there to gain? Her thoughts chased each other in circles, coming to nothing conclusive.  
  
It was another twenty-five agonizing minutes of running through the noise before she burst through the front door of her house.

* * *

 

Taylor charged into the house. Nobody was home, so she didn’t bother to be discreet as she galloped down into the basement where she kept her costume and the rest of her equipment hidden.   
  
Over the past couple of days, she had been having her collection of black widows working as much as she could get them to, repairing her main costume and making new material. Her encounter with Lung had been a wake-up call. Sure, she had a costume that was bullet-proof and highly resistant to knives, but she had been reckless in engaging a parahuman who had fire throwing as a power. What’s more, the section of her mask that allowed her hair to flow freely out the back was an aspect of her costume that she couldn’t help but reevaluate. She liked her hair and it was her favorite thing about her appearance, but she couldn’t afford to be vain when it endangered her. So she was working on an alternative, a full helmet. But it was still in its early stages of troubleshooting, and now it was the third time within a week that she needed something fully functional. At this rate of having several hundred black widow spiders, she would either need to be even more careful not to damage her costume, or she would need to find a way to get a lot more of them. The problem was, she didn’t have the facilities to keep nearly enough spiders where she could breed them and task them with producing costumes at a faster pace. Another need that she needed to address, especially as she found herself very suddenly ramping up her activities as a cape. She needed a base of operations, and for that, she needed money, more money than the two grand that the Undersiders had gifted her with…  
  
She found herself ruminating those kind of longer-term considerations as she pulled on her costume in record time. She pulled on her clothes over her costume, and ran back upstairs.  
  
This was another element of her budding cape life that she was increasingly finding it hard to work around, the fact that she had no place to discreetly enter or exit in costume, especially during the daytime. And for that she needed…a hidden base of operations that included a secret entry and exit. Jesus, she had planned so much for her future as a cape and she hadn’t thought of any of this at all. And now, she was just barely managing as she found herself hitting the lifestyle of a masked hero, running full speed.   
  
And that was on top of being underage, and keeping up the charade of being an ordinary teenager for her dad. Small wonder why so many underaged capes just threw up their hands and joined the Wards. But she didn’t want to join the Wards, at least, not yet; despite the resources that would become available to her, she vaguely knew that there was a lot of red tape involved, which didn’t appeal to her.   
  
That aside, her dad was a concern in the here and now. She had a feeling that things were a mess all over the city. What if her dad got caught up in a bombing, like she nearly just was? She had to check on him, but at the same time, she had to make sure that she could go out.  
  
She caught herself stalling and shook her head at herself in disgust. What the fuck was the matter with her? She loved her dad and he could be injured or dying, for all she knew, and she was more worried about him unknowingly disallowing her from running around during a supervillainous attack? Not telling him about her getting powers and wanting to be a superhero was making this way too complicated. As much as she wanted to play things close to her chest, she knew the time was coming very soon to sit him down and tell him. She didn’t know quite how he’d react, but continuing to strenuously lie and keep things away from her dad made her feel uncomfortable at best and ill at worst. She was keeping it all from him because she was afraid that he wouldn’t understand or support her.   
  
She clenched her fists as her stood in her living room, thinking hard.  
  
If…he ultimately didn’t support her, she needed to know one way or another. She had to face this, face possible rejection or misguided mollycoddling and pressure to not be a cape. But…he was her dad. Maybe he wouldn’t know what it’s like to have powers, but he knew how it was that she needed to do something and that she wouldn’t change her mind about it.  
  
Yesterday, in a day that felt surreal to even recall, she took a huge leap of faith. Multiple leaps of faith, really, but a big one was coming clean to the Undersiders about what she was really doing, and she had risked possibly dying or making real enemies. Funny how her priorities placed dying at the hands of strangers under misunderstanding or rejection from her father. She wondered briefly why she didn’t feel like that spoke to her of skewed priorities.  
  
She was being dumb and she knew it. She needed to call her dad and make sure he was okay, no matter how much it felt like she was endangering her need to go out as a cape right now and provide assistance to a city that just got bombed. It was fucked up that she was letting such a selfish impulse overrule how much she was worried sick about her dad.  
  
She marched into the kitchen to where her house’s landline was located, took a deep breath to steel herself, and then picked up the phone to punch in the number for the Dockworker’s Union, where her dad worked.  
  
It rang, and rang. Her heart pounded, her guts roiling with anxiety. If something happened to her dad…  
  
The call was picked up on the tenth ring.  
  
“Hello?” Danny Hebert answered, sounding harried.  
  
“Dad!” Taylor yelped.  
  
“Taylor!” Danny cried. “There’s been bombings all over town! Are you hurt?!”  
  
“I’m fine, Dad,” Taylor answered, washed away with relief. If he was talking like this, he was likely fine. “There was a bomb at school just as classes were letting out. I don’t know how many are injured, but I didn’t stick around to find out. I needed to know that you’re okay.”  
  
“They bombed the school?!” Danny yelled, alarmed. “Those bastards! I’m so glad you’re okay, Taylor. We didn’t get hit, but we’re finishing up evacuating now. I was just on my way out when you called. I don’t think it’s safe here, so I’ll need to keep this short. I’m heading home and then we’ll discuss everything when I get there.”  
  
“Actually, Dad, there’s a favor I need to ask of you,” Taylor said hurriedly. “I have a friend on the other side of town, I need to make sure they’re okay. I can’t reach them and I’m worried they got caught in the explosions. Please, can I go check on them?”  
  
Mostly lies, but Taylor rationalized that it was currently way too much trouble to explain that she needed to get out there and do something as a cape. Check up on Saitama, Lisa, and the other Undersiders. She wasn’t close to the Undersiders like she sort of was with Lisa, but a part of her was worried nonetheless.  
  
“What? Taylor, you can’t be serious,” Danny said incredulously. “What if you get hurt? The police, military, and capes are going to be out in force, but there’s no telling what might happen. I’m sure your friend will be okay.”  
  
“I’ll only be gone for a few hours, back before curfew. I won’t go without my pepper spray, and I know how to run from trouble. Please? I’m worried sick like I was worried about you, and I need to make sure they’re okay. I won’t do anything reckless,” Taylor pleaded. She heard Danny sigh deeply on the other end of the line.  
  
“…alright, kiddo. You have four hours, when the sun sets. Please call me with whatever means you can manage when you find them, and then come right back. Avoid going anywhere that looks like trouble. Please be careful. Okay?” Danny said.  
  
“Thank you, Dad. I’ll be really careful, I promise. I’ll see you tonight when I get back. Be careful, yourself. I love you,” Taylor said, relieved that she managed this.  
  
“I love you, too, Taylor. I’ll see you soon.” With that, Danny hung up.  
  
She reholstered the kitchen phone, feeling torn. Soon. She needed to tell her dad soon. Hell, she should have told him earlier. But this moment would have been a bad time to reveal it all to him.  
  
She ran upstairs to her room, dumping her school things onto her bed, to make space in her backpack and to lighten the load. After taking a moment to check that she had everything she needed, she rushed out of the house and ran down the street towards downtown, pulling out her cellphone to call Lisa. She answered on the second ring, this time.  
  
“Taylor. Some bad news, I’m afraid. Oni Lee used the initial chaos to spring Bakuda from custody.”  
  
“Oh, no,” Taylor groaned.  
  
“Yeah. And it gets worse. Lung had been under heavy guard in the same facility and there were countermeasures in place, but between Bakuda and Oni Lee and a bunch of gang members, they managed to spring him out somehow,” Lisa stated grimly. Taylor’s heart sank futher.  
  
“It sounds like things are about to get really ugly,” Taylor said, nervously. She remembered very well that Armsmaster had warned her about repercussions. Now, it wasn’t the ABB that she had to worry about, but Lung himself coming after her for revenge, both for being involved in his arrest and for some of the nastier things she had her bugs do to him that night. She plowed on. “I’m meeting up with Saitama. Is there anything that we can do?”  
  
“You hear about the ABB back to being full power and you’re still willing to go back out? You better be careful,” Lisa laughed briefly. “As to what you can do…well. There’s been an emergency meeting called for all the gangs in Brockton Bay, excluding the ABB. The Undersiders and I are going to attend shortly, and I’ll let you know how it goes afterward. For now, you and Saitama would be good for simply going around and helping disaster relief, if you truly need something to do and can’t sit still.”  
  
“Yeah, alright,” Taylor said. Thinking on her earlier impulse to get out and do something that was born from the heat of the moment, it was kind of aimless, but regardless, she was sticking with her guns here. She was going out. “Call me after the meeting? I need to know what we’re up against.”  
  
“No problem,” Lisa said easily. “Watch your back out there.”  
  
Taylor hung out, took another steadying breath, and then made her way out of the house. During her conversation with Lisa, she had her swarm dispersed for several square blocks around her house. For whatever reason, it felt like her range had extended a bit. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it felt like her swarm responded a lot quicker, more precisely. It was a little disquieting. In any case, it was through her swarm providing her with a sense of touch that she knew where Saitama was waiting for her at a bus stop two blocks away.  
  
She hurried out of the house, and then briskly walked through the neighborhood and ducked into a nearby alleyway a block from her house to shuck her outer clothes off and pull the rest of her costume on, where nobody could see her. She stashed her backpack in a hiding place in near where she changed, and jogged the rest of the way through the alley, taking some corners and coming out onto the street in full costume. From there, it was only a minute before she spotted Saitama.  
  
He was sitting on the bus-stop’s bench, reading a newspaper that clearly someone had left there. He looked up as she approached, and nodded laconically as he folded the paper up and tossing it onto the seat beside him.  
  
“Yo,” he said, getting up. He was dressed in his costume again, and even was wearing that spidersilk mask she had given him. “So, where to?”  
  
“Hey,” she greeted. “It sounds like there’s been bombings all over the place, so let’s just go and find the nearest place and see if we can’t help anybody hurt and trapped in the buildings.”  
  
Saitama nodded again.  
  
“Lead the way.”

* * *

 

As it turned out, they didn’t have to go terribly far for their first stop. A block that was a ten minute jog from Taylor’s house containing a supermarket, apartment building, and several storefronts was cratered. It seemed like the bomb that exploded here originated between the supermarket and the apartment building, with the storefronts having their windows being blown out by the blastwave.   
  
The supermarket’s parking lot was full of people, mostly civilians that looked worse for wear; several firetrucks and three ambulances focused on clearing out the block and triaging the survivors, respectively. It was as simple as approaching the aid workers, who wasted no time in accepting their help after they gave them a basic run-down of how they would be useful to them.  
  
“I can use my bugs to detect gas leaks, find survivors, and direct survivors to where you need them to go. I can multitask all that and more,” Taylor said.  
  
“I’m strong and nothing hurts me. I can help you clear out rubble or whatever,” Saitama supplied, clearly taking Taylor’s lead.  
  
The grizzled fire captain nodded shortly, assessing them.  
  
“Right,” he said. He pointed at Saitama and then jerked his thumb at the apartment building. “I have a lieutenant who could use your help, if you’re durable enough. Go to him and he’ll direct you from there.” He pointed at Taylor. “As for you, with me. Clearing out the supermarket and directing traffic will go a lot smoother with your powers.”  
  
With that, they got to work.

* * *

 

Taylor was feeling completely out of her depth. She never had taken any emergency aid courses, not even first aid.  
  
It was a little clumsy at first, but she got the hang of being an extra pair of hands, going between the EMTs and the fire captain, doing what needed to be done.  
  
Saitama, for his part, went into the apartment building alongside of squads of firefighters and was doing the literal heavy lifting of clearing paths and pushing slabs of concrete aside like they were pieces of styrofoam. Other times, he carried people out. Taylor noticed that he was always very gentle in how he handled people, in contrast to how easily he tore apart wood, metal, and other tough materials with his hands. She could also see that the emergency workers noticed, too, though none of them said anything.  
  
As they fell into a new routine, Taylor could see that the emergency workers visibly appreciated their presence as they found the pair to be really helpful in speeding along recovery and aid. It showed up in their tones when they asked her if she needed water, or if Saitama needed a break. Saitama politely turned down breaks in favor of keeping at it. At the worker’s insistence, Taylor accepted a bottle of water and a wrap from a nearby sandwich shop that was, incredibly, still open. It didn’t hurt that the people they were helping seemed to relax with the sight of a pair of heroes on the scene, with went far with boosting morale. People who were the worst off got carted away to nearby hospitals after they were stabilized, and the crowds of people thinned as those that didn’t need to go to a hospital went home.  
  
After about three hours, things had tidied up so much that the fire captain eventually dismissed them, thanking them for their help.  
  
“The rest from here is just capping things off before we get reassigned to other places as backup. I mighty appreciate your help today,” the captain said with an air that spoke of how tired he was and that his duty was far from over, but his tone was sincere and respectful all the same.  
  
They all shook hands, and Saitama and Taylor left the block behind.  
  
A little boy who got pulled by Saitama himself, one of the last people to be accounted for inside the apartment building and was now being looked over by the EMTs, waved at them as they walked away.  
  
Saitama smiled and held up a hand without waving. Taylor gave a little wave.  
  
It was quieter now, eerily so. Sure, there was still some noise. Some distant shouting, screaming, and crying abruptly sounding off here and there, but not quite in the tenor of panic that Taylor remembered they had in the minutes after the chain of bombings. There hadn’t been any fresh reports of explosions, from what she overheard from the fire captains radio chatter back with the companies that were coordinating. There were less people on the streets and traffic had normalized. The wails of sirens still echoed faraway as volunteers pulled double and triple time to deal with scores of crises all over the city. Taylor could only imagine the day they’ve been having and what the night ahead of them would be like. She got something of an idea from volunteering to deal with just one crisis among many more happening simultaneously. She wondered what kind of scene had unfolded at Winslow High, but a small awful part of herself couldn’t bring itself to care deeply.  
  
“It’s weird, seeing this side of the aftermath,” Saitama abruptly said, breaking the mildly awkward silence that Taylor had let build up as she ruminated without saying anything.  
  
“What do you mean?” Taylor asked, craning her neck and furrowing her brows as her looked over at Saitama.  
  
“It’s just…Hm. How do I put this? I’m used to being a hero in big ways. It’s more simple. Normally, I just put on my cape, go out to where a monster is killing people or some genocidal organization is keeping their base or whatever other major threat I hear about on the news, I defeat them, then I just simply go home and turn in for the night. Even when I joined the Hero Association, that didn’t change, not really. Being there today, doing simple stuff like that…it was weird, but not bad. I never really gave much thought to the aftermath of all my fights, to the people who have to clean up after damage is done, people get hurt, and monsters get slain. But these people, they do their duties. It’s not something that I would personally find appealing to do, day in and day out. I respect those people who patiently clean things up and deal with the fallout, because who else is going to do it, you know? But that was nice, even though there wasn’t much for me or you to do. Sure, we helped them, but our real strength is fighting monsters. They seemed to appreciate the effort we gave, though, despite not doing much. It was kind of nice to still be a hero, even if it wasn’t flashy or decisive like punching a monster.”  
  
He shook his head, and chuckled.  
  
“Sorry, I’m not really sure where I was going with that.”  
  
“No, yeah, I get what you mean,” Taylor said. “It’s kind of anticlimatic after doing stuff like taking down Lung and Bakuda, but it felt good to make a difference, even if it was a drop in the bucket as opposed to doing stuff like taking down a major villain. I think the good feelings from it are from the connection with the people who only ever see the worst shit routinely, and the people who just experienced the worst day of their lives.”  
  
Saitama nodded.  
  
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m glad that I could do that, even if it wasn’t something I’d normally do.”  
  
Taylor had nothing to add to that, and simply nodded. She let the conversation taper off.  
  
They made it more two blocks in companionable silence before it was broken by Taylor’s phone. She had forgotten that Lisa had told her she’d call.  
  
She hurriedly pulled out her phone and answered as they kept walking.  
  
“Lisa.”  
  
“Taylor. We just got out of the meeting, and they called it. There’s a truce in effect right now, weak as it is. Everybody’s teaming up against the ABB. There’s going to be a raid tomorrow, at noon. It’s only fair to ask since you’ve fought Lung before, so do you want in? The villains will be okay with a hero walking among them if you don’t start anything,” Lisa said. Taylor could imagine a sardonic grin on the other girl’s face as she said that last bit. “Saitama can come, too, if he wants. Same conditional terms. Interested?”  
  
“Yeah,” Taylor said, mind racing. “Lemme ask him.” She lowered the phone from her ear a bit and looked directly at Saitama. He had been looking around, but now turned his head to face her. “Saitama?”  
  
“Yeah?” he asked.  
  
“Are you busy tomorrow?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading!


End file.
